According to Koonin, despite adopting a model in which he ‘assumes a deliberately inflated rate of RNA production’, the probability that a coupled translation–replication emerges by chance in a single observable universe is < 10-1018 – that is, less than 1 in a number expressed as 1 followed by 1,018 zeros.34 Impossible to imagine; but to put it in context, the entire number of subatomic particles in the observable universe is estimated to be a mere 1086 – by comparison, so infinitesimally small as to be practically non-existent. Thus, effectively, if chance alone is allowed to operate, the
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