Relative Likelihood for Life as a Function of Cosmic Time
  Is life most likely to emerge at the present cosmic time near a star like the
Sun? We address this question by calculating the relative formation probability
per unit time of habitable Earth-like planets within a fixed comoving volume of
the Universe, dP(t)/dt, starting from the first stars and continuing to the
distant cosmic future. We conservatively restrict our attention to the context
of "life as we know it" and the standard cosmological model, LCDM. We 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.
