Even ignoring uncertainty in their estimate, being in the first 8% is hardly statistically unusual or ‘early’. It’s just what we’d expect from the mediocrity principle. Unusual would be say 10^-20, like some physical constants which are apparently under significant observational selection pressure and have extremely improbable values.
Knowing that we are not improbably early does perhaps suggest that some alien models are unlikely—for example it is unlikely that aliens are very common and very aggressive/expansive in our region of the multiverse, because if that was the case then observers like us would always tend to find ourselves on an unusually early planet. But we aren’t.
Actual paper: http://hubblesite.org/pubinfo/pdf/2015/35/pdf.pdf
Note that “Earth is one of the first habitable planets to form” seems to be an overstatement. It is one of the first 8% to form. But nonetheless...
Even ignoring uncertainty in their estimate, being in the first 8% is hardly statistically unusual or ‘early’. It’s just what we’d expect from the mediocrity principle. Unusual would be say 10^-20, like some physical constants which are apparently under significant observational selection pressure and have extremely improbable values.
Knowing that we are not improbably early does perhaps suggest that some alien models are unlikely—for example it is unlikely that aliens are very common and very aggressive/expansive in our region of the multiverse, because if that was the case then observers like us would always tend to find ourselves on an unusually early planet. But we aren’t.