One in 10^24 seems like really easy odds to beat. Basically anything should happen more often than that, right? But if we choose a random 17 letters of the alphabet, the odds that they spell "probabilistically" is less than that. If we gave 17 letters to each of the 10^24 planets, we expect the word to happen on only one star (actually less than one). It's not too hard to argue that life is more difficult to get by random chance than the word "probabilistically."<p>So before taking this article to mean that life is actually pretty likely, consider that an event having to occur at least one in 10^24 odds is actually extremely difficult for complex probabilistic phenomena. Who knows how likely life is, but we can't just assume it's higher than one in 10^24.