[dkuchar]

the more I read about evolution, emergence, etc, the more I start to feel that life is almost as common as rock, and not all that much more interesting. all it needs is a highly interactive environment of molecules. water and carbon works in our environment, and I'm sure there's other ways it can be brewed. carbon based life is likely to be the most common only because of the multitude of ways that it can be transfigured.

anyway, given the right set of conditions, which shouldn't be all that uncommon in the universe, life is a matter of time, not a stroke of luck. so, in my completely amateurish opinion, I think any planet that would be immediately inhabitable (by us) would already be inhabited. however, I'm sure there are plenty of planets, Mars even, initially barren (at this moment) that we could terraform to our purposes. as I alluded to in my first comment, we're natural born terraformers, and we've done that already (in this case for the worse) on this planet.