On the Habitability of Our Universe
  Is life most likely to emerge at the present cosmic time near a star like the
Sun? We consider the habitability of the Universe throughout cosmic history,
and conservatively restrict our attention to the context of "life as we know
it" and the standard cosmological model, LCDM. The habitable cosmic epoch
started shortly after the first stars formed, about 30 Myr after the Big Bang,
and will end about 10 Tyr from now, when all stars will die. We review the
formation history of habitable planets and find that unless habitability around
low mass stars is suppressed, life is most likely to exist near 0.1 solar mass
stars ten trillion years from now. Spectroscopic searches for biosignatures in
the atmospheres of transiting Earth-mass planets around low mass stars will
determine whether present-day life is indeed premature or typical from a cosmic
perspective.
