There are more than 2 trillion galaxies.

[Cattledog]

Which contain more stars than all the grains of sands on every beach on Earth. Most of these stars have planets.

LIFE is not exclusive to our planet.

[wasupaloopa]

1. Did Jesus die for their sins?

[Lint Head]

3. But Jesus didn't die. He was resurrected and reconstituted.

And then apparently when is the outer space.

[wasupaloopa]

9. The way I see if Jesus died for our sins

we are the only beings.

If we aren’t the only beings there is no Jesus.

[gtar100]

17. He has to visit each one to do that. It's taking time but he's getting it done.

He has eternity after all. But I heard he thought Earth was awesome and one of his favorites.

[left-of-center2012]

2. But life on other planets ...

... may not resemble human life on Earth.

Maybe giant earthworms?

[htuttle]

4. A more interesting question...

...is whether it's all so far apart and short lived that each one may as well be alone in the universe.

[Voltaire2]

6. current (lack of) evidence supports that depressing hypothesis.

[hunter]

18. It's not depressing at all.

Creatures as bloodthirsty and xenophobic as ourselves can't reach us here on Earth, and just as well, we can't reach them.

I don't want any faster-than-light space alien equivalents of whaling ships dropping out of the sky to harvest plentiful humans as food for their pets.

Look at us, we act like we're the only sentient intelligent species on the planet. We're not. What's the point of searching for intelligent life in outer space when so many of us can't even recognize it here on Earth?

I believe the speed of light is absolute, faster-than-light space travel is impossible, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

[CloudWatcher]

20. intelligent?

The more I learn about human behavior (frequently referred to as "inhuman" behavior), the more I question whether or not we qualify as intelligent life. The best description I can come up with is 'sometimes rational' ... but that's just about the same as ravens and crows.

[defacto7]

8. Or...

There may be places unlike ours where clusters of intelligent life evolved.

[True Dough]

5. How many of those galaxies

have you visited, Cattledog? I've always wanted to go, but I just haven't yet made the time.

[Rainbow Droid]

7. Please tell this life to call us so we know we aren't alone in the universe. Thanks in advance.

[NRaleighLiberal]

10. Why does trump have to be in ours?

[donco]

11. I wonder who

counted them.

[marble falls]

12. More accurately: there are uncountable solar sytems with planets that may support ...

life.

[CloudWatcher]

13. Not so fast ...

The Future of Humanity Institute (Oxford University) took a closer look at the Drake equation and concluded that we are likely alone in the galaxy and in the observable universe, dissolving the Fermi paradox. The paper:

FHI: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

Our main result is to show that proper treatment of scientific uncertainties dissolves the Fermi paradox by showing that it is not at all unlikely ex ante for us to be alone in the Milky Way, or in the observable universe. Our second result is to show that, taking account of observational bounds on the prevalence of other civilizations, our updated probabilities suggest that there is a substantial probability that we are alone. Our third result is that pessimism for the survival of humanity based on the Fermi paradox is unfounded.

And a popular press review of it: Vox: Why haven’t we found aliens yet?

I found the arguments in the paper depressingly convincing.

[qazplm135]

21. I didn't

They made assumptions just like everyone else, and IMO showed the limitations of statistical analysis particularly with mostly unknown or uncertain variables.

We don't even know if the universe is infinite or not. We've only been gathering data on this idea (intelligent life in the universe) for less than 100 years out of 14 billion.

It's like the ancient Greeks doing statistical analysis of life on the planet after ten minutes of walking around Greece.

I find it logically unlikely, particularly in an infinite universe where mathematically if something happens once, it happens an infinite number of times, that intelligent life only springs up once.

[Vinnie From Indy]

14. Enrico Fermi asked "where is everybody?" in response to the question of alien life

The Fermi paradox, or Fermi's paradox, named after physicist Enrico Fermi, is the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence and high probability estimates for the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. The basic points of the argument, made by physicists Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) and Michael H. Hart (born 1932), are:

There are billions of stars in the galaxy that are similar to the Sun, and many of these stars are billions of years older than the Solar system.

With high probability, some of these stars have Earth-like planets,and if the Earth is typical, some may have developed intelligent life.

Some of these civilizations may have developed interstellar travel, a step the Earth is investigating now.

Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years.

According to this line of reasoning, the Earth should have already been visited by extraterrestrial aliens.

[CloudWatcher]

15. Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

See my above post for one treatment of why the paradox isn't a paradox. They point out some math errors and observational bias as two main factors

Lies, damned lies and statistics. Gotta be careful.

[qazplm135]

22. maybe we are first

or second, or third.

Maybe we've been bypassed.

Maybe intelligent life is clustered far away from us.

Maybe intelligent life doesn't always translate to technological life (you could have highly intelligent water creatures on a water planet who can't make it to space).

[Permanut]

16. And it's so amazing that Earth is in the center..

and they all rotate around the Earth. Hard to imagine how that happens.

[cstanleytech]

19. Life itself probably exists the question is does any other advanced tool using

life able to build things like computers and rockets currently exist? Considering most species go extinct I would not be willing to wager any money on another such species being alive currently let alone in our own small galaxy.

[airplaneman]

23. I am sure there is life elsewhere - that does not seem to be a question to me.

The real question is it even possible for an intelligent living being on one planet to travel the great distances to other planets with an intelligent living being. Both the distance and the time of being intelligent. Meaning the odds of two intelligent aliens being intelligent at the same time and one being able to go visit the other. We can easily be 100 million years out of sink with the real closest other intelligent one in all galactic history. I think it is likely time and distance make it almost impossible. On another note - with all the cell phone pictures these days it seems the spotting of UFO's and Aliens has died out - When there was less means of recording there were more reports of events. Kind of makes me thing it has never happened.
-Airplane