The journal Astrobiology has carried a new research wherein The Australian National University (ANU) astronomers said that young habitable planets can become unstable very quickly. The planets that was once used to be a life-giving oasis transforms into a hellish hothouse or frozen wasteland at a very fast pace.

Lead author of the paper, Aditya Chopra, said, “The universe is probably filled with habitable planets, so many scientists think it should be teeming with aliens. Early life is fragile, so we believe it rarely evolves quickly enough to survive. Most early planetary environments are unstable”.

He said that for the production of a habitable planet, life forms have to regulate greenhouse gases like water and carbon dioxide for keeping surface temperatures stable.

In contrast with Earth, most worlds will probably not find this balance, eventually succumbing to being cooked by a runaway greenhouse effect such as Venus or get frozen by a thinning atmosphere such as Mars.

Life won’t often be sufficiently lucky to win the race against environmental fluctuations for achieving a stabilizing factor.

Our planet Earth, already having the amazing fortune to exist at just the right spot surrounding a stable star, initiated life and that life had a part to play in stabilizing its atmosphere as it evolved during the past 4 billion years.

Co-investigator Charley Lineweaver, also from ANU, said that life on Earth likely played a main role in stabilizing the climate of the planet.

And, this is probably the reason why astronomers aren’t able to detect a galaxy packed with alien life. Just the presence of a habitable world at somewhere, doesn’t mean its right for life for long. This is another hurdle so far against life from achieving a foothold.