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answers:
Quadrillian say: Yes indeed.
But there is another factor you need to consider: time.
Our planetary system has maintained the same configuration of planets for billions of years. This is despite the apparently large number of rogue planets wandering about in space, and the fact that the solar system has completed hundreds of circuits of the galaxy, risking any number of solar-system-disrupting encounters.
Even if the "strange exact, environmental conditions" were to occur elsewhere, the question is whether the planetary system would be fortunate enough to survive as long as Earth has?
So far, we cannot answer this question, but the odds do not appear to be good.
Cheers!
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Who say: we are the way we are cos the conditions on earth are the way THEY are
If those conditions had been different then WE would have been different but we would STILL be calling ourselves "humans"
To make it simpler for the stupid
The earth aint the way it is to suite the way we are, and we aint the way we are in order to be "human"
for all I know ants may call themselves "human" and call us "ants"
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quantumclaustrophobe say: Actually, we don't *know* how rare life is... think of the conditions here on Earth - there's life in the ices of Antarctica, there's life in the boiling waters of Yellowstone, there's life on the 'black smokers' beneath the ocean... life is pretty tenacious.
While we're guessing what conditions are necessary - because, we don't know what it was like on Earth when life began, and we don't have any other examples to examine at the moment - we try to take a fairly conservative approach - looking for planets that may have liquid water on it's surface, the planet can't be too hot or cold, it probably should have a magnetic field, and so forth - it may be *much* more likely than we guess, or, it may be quite rare... at the moment - we're only guessing.
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