A History of Cosmic Habitability

Abstract

Our understanding of the universe is based on the big bang cosmological model, which describes an expanding universe whose development began 13.8 billion years ago from a hot, dense state. This model introduces a strong evolutionary and historical perspective to the account of many observed physical phenomena, including the origin of life and its possible distribution in the universe. I discuss how properly taking the “big picture” and its temporal unfolding into account is relevant for the scope of astrobiology and SETI (the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence).

Keywords

• big history
• seti
• astrobiology