Is there life out there, or are we alone

Was listening to an interview with a scientist working on the SETI project trying to find extraterrestrial life outside our planet. He was beginning to lose faith and starting to think that there is nothing else out there. Based on no verified visits, no background noise detectable, but primarily the unique environment of our Earth.
 
He conceded that there are billions of stars, many with planets, but the chance of having a perfect Earth environment is rare to non existent. Just the right balance of water and oxygen, atmospheric pressure, energy from the sun to create and support life.
This ecosphere may not be duplicated anywhere in the heavens. We may well be alone as the only living beings in the universe.
 
I had a Coffee House moment and imagined somewhere a hundred light years away where a scientist is struggling with the same question. Comes back from a lunch break to analyze the new data coming in from the Earth probe. Finished a satisfying meal of silicon epoxide patties smothered in hydrogen sulfide sauce. Brews up a warm cup of ammonia and starts to crunch the data.
The results are dismal. Planet Earth is a raging inferno where even the rare compound ice is melted into molten seas covering a majority of the planet. The heat so extreme that the liquified water is vaporized into clouds that constantly pour onto the planet surface in corrosive rains.
 
The atmosphere is deadly with lethal amounts of the toxic element oxygen.
 
There is however a trace of methane in the atmosphere. Methane, the cardinal necessity for life to form and evolve. The surface of Earth is too scalding hot to support liquid methane, but perhaps in the ancient past, conditions were cold enough to allow lakes and rivers of liquid methane. Earth is now a flaming inferno impossible of supporting life, but at one time, maybe rudimentary bacterial forms could have existed. The evolution of intelligent life on Earth is impossible.
 
Sometimes when watching FOX News, I doubt that intelligent life exists on planet Earth.
 
ET phone home.
 
John

What are the odds we exist at the same time?  With billions of years to work with..humans have only existed 5 million of it.  All that time for other life forms to rise and fall, maybe a hundred times over, all over the universe, and still not happen to exist at the same time humans on earth do.  
 
Everything on earth is limited to this basic set of senses to detect reality with. We already know we aren't detecting the true nature of anything.  A dog sees a red car completely differently than a human does, and neither of us are wrong, nor right.  Neither of us know the true nature of the car and all the ways it actually exists in reality.  We only know what our senses can tell us, the way they translate for our physiology.  
 
So how do we know we aren't surrounded by "alien" life?  How do we know the universe as we see it only looks the way it does to us?  Other beings could exist and occupy reality in a completely different way, detecting the universe entirely differently than we do and we can't impact each other in any possible way.  
 
Or maybe I need to put this pipe down.  

Like the sands of time, each of us is a small grain in the fabric of time/space and sometimes we go back to our roots..............or try.
 

 
 

...or the scientist on that planet adjusting the thermostat on the wall to a comfortable 9,000 degrees longing for Summer (just around the corner...300 Earth years) when he can open the window to take a deep breath of fresh vaporized iron...Depressed with the new atmospheric data from the little third planet in the Sol system...he had such high hopes for - Nothing but Nitrogen, Oxygen and -worst of all- lethal amounts of gaseous and liquid H2O...
 
I exist, therefore I partake...

For a moment, I thought you were talking about an iLok dongle.....
 
  

If you would have asked if there was intelligent life out there we could have wrapped this up in just a few responses.

57Gregy

MandolinPicker

57Gregy
Aliens do exist and they're on Earth.
They're called cats.

Ah yes - Mr. Gary Seven and Isis

Saw that episode last week. 

"Assignment: Earth" - IMO one of the best OS Star Trek episodes. Can't compare Shatner's acting to Robert Lansing's...and Teri Garr is, well, Teri Garr. I like Lansing's acting, but he never really had a big break-out into true stardom, which is too bad because I think he had it in him. Actually, "Assignment Earth" was supposed to be what they call a "backdoor pilot" for a new series; but it never happened. Notice that at the very end, Kirk in speaking to Seven and  Garr's character Lincoln, says something like "I think we will be seeing more of you.." or something similar, implying the new series.

We are the center of the universe, everything revolves around us ... including the sun and the moon. 
That's just a simple axiomatic fact :)