Alchohol was detected in interstellar clouds, making obsolete the theory that drunken, rowdy crowds were a Terran phenomina. Oceans are believed essential for life, but so was the habitable zone. It is the height of "optimism" to believe that if one is wrong, the other must be even more right than before. There is life on Earth which exists in deep, oceanic trenches, near hot volcanic vents. Since that life could not exist prior to the volcanic vent opening, it can be assumed that the formation of life, at its most basic, is occuring on a regular basis. These life-forms may or may not have any nucleic structures we would recognise. For this reason, until such extreme life-forms on Earth are better understood, and the range of conditions in which they can form are better quantified, only the very brave, or very stupid, could claim that "factor X will make life more/less abundant in our Universe". All we really know is that the picture is a hell of a lot more complicated than it used to be.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/12/19/1419200
