I've been reading a lot of scientific articles lately on my Zite feed (get this for your device if you don't have it already-by far the best app I have ever used, but I digress). Apparently, astronomers have done some statistical extrapolation based on all the galaxies and solar systems they can now see, and hypothesize conservatively that there are almost certainly virtually countless distant planets out there in "the life belt" (not too cold, not too hot, but "just right") that could potentially support life. The notion that we are alone in the universe gets harder and harder to buy as 1st Galileo, then the 1st space mission to look back and film the rising earth, and now super telescopes in space destroy an earth-centric cosmology. And the theory of 'panspermia,' that comets and other space debris collide with and "seed" new life on other planets throughout the universe, has gained a lot of traction in recent years.
Though I am a huge skeptic, and don't much go in for extraterrestrial visitation/Area 51 type speculation (though of course any UFO is just that, a UFO, at least until and if anyone definitively id's it), I guarantee you, and would bet everything I own, that there is more life "out there," and in more forms, than we could ever begin to fathom or will ever begin to know. Hell, look at the fossil record of the astonishing "alien" life forms that have existed on our own planet in various epochs! If by some miracle we don't destroy ourselves before scientists discover some distant life form, imagine the sociological impact that could have-I could foresee it being both a great and possibly terrible day in human history. Picture it-Planet Earth, united (at last) under some howling demagogue, only brought together by our collective hatred of the alien hordes. But if I were a betting man, a far more likely scenario seems to be that long after we humans have destroyed ourselves in the comparative eyeblink of time we have occupied our little speck of dust, other life forms will be picking through our archaeological ruins looking for clues.
And no, I haven't gotten into any of Wullie's road dope if you were wondering. I just think a lot about these things.
