'Perhaps it's only a matter of time': Intelligent life may be much more likely than first thought, new model suggests

Early life may have made an inhospitable Earth more habitable -- and it could be happening on alien planets too, new research proposes.

The emergence of human life may not have been as improbable as scientists once thought, a new model suggests. The finding increases the likelihood of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, the researchers say.

Previously, scientists assumed that for human life to emerge on Earth, it needed to pass through a series of "hard steps" — flukes in evolution that are incredibly unlikely to occur within the lifetime of an average star. This makes our position as intelligent observers of the universe a rare occurrence and our chances of finding intelligent aliens low.