Don't see how this can be the only planet with life.

It would be the epitome of arrogance and ignorance to insist that humans are the only intelligent form of life in the universe. Especially given what we humans have shown we're capable of perpetrating against every living being on this rock.

I would encourage any other life forms in the this, or any other, universe, to give this planet a wide berth. Everything we touch turns to shit.

My stance for many years is that the universe is far too old and too big for Earth to have the only form of intelligent life. Its been hypothesized that silicon based life forms could indeed exist and would be far more complex than the carbon based lifeforms on Earth. Only time will tell if that is indeed the case. The NBC news article in the link below provides more information on this subject.

[nbcnews.com]

If there is no other sentient life, would be an awful waste of space.

there is certainly some kind of life elsewhere than on earth. sentient life? that's a whole other thing. i am sure there is something microbial somewhere, probably living on methane, but it's anybody's guess whether life that we would recognize as sentient exists elsewhere. if it does, it's not without shouting distance.

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I think more then believe logically that in the vastness of the universe there are other voices out there. I think the better question is are there beings out there with the intelligence and self control to expand their reach out to the stars and across said gulf to us? Will they be peaceful? I hope that we as a species some day can get our shit together enough to escape Earth and spread across the stars. I hope and think that any species advanced enough to reach the stars and spread among them would be intelligent and self aware enough not to be violent ignorant fucks. I think Hawking's
contention that any aliens that would come to us would be the boot to our ant is very much in line with the human fear of the unknown and tendencies to react with violence to the unknown. Would alien visitors be better? I like to imagine aliens have already found us and watch waiting to see if and when we escape our solar system will they have to smack us down or help raise us up?

I choose not to "believe" either. Based on what I "know", I doubt earth is the only planet with life, but I'm less confident about intelligent life. As for Aliens, statistically speaking there may be, but it took a thousand happenstances for us to have evolved to this point, so the odds of that happening elsewhere seem very low. If they do exist they're likely too far to ever make contact, but I hope the universe is teeming with it.

I believe there is other life in the universe. The observable universe is 46 1/2 billion light years from us and a light year equals 5.88 trillion miles. These numbers are too large to even comprehend. I feel it is a certainty that some life forms exist in a universe of this size. Closer to home, I would like to see funding for NASA to explore below the ice on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn.

To think we are alone in the universe, would be foolish, doncha think?
I definitely believe there are many, other life forms.

Since every reply is some sort of "yeah but we have no evidence of it but there's a whole lot of space and we aren't special," which is kinda what I was going to say, I will go somewhere else with my response:

Area 51. Aliems. Ghost aliems. With special powers. And Reptiles. World Government. Illuminati. The New York Yankees. Donald Trump.

I've said too much already. #Resistance #SaveHumanityFromHillaryClinton #ShesASentientSquidCreatureinDisguiseAndAlsoFromOuterSpace

Doubtlessly, there are many, many worlds out there. Worlds where amoebas rule. Worlds where Reptilians rule. Worlds where nobody rules. But until we can send spacecraft faster than the speed of light, we can only speculate as to what, if any, life forms inhabit them.

I think the chances of Earth being the sole oasis of life in the universe are about as likely as there being a creator god who after bringing the universe into existence out of nothingness, decided that he would create Mankind in his image on a rather dreary M class planet orbiting the not very special star on the spiral arm of an average galaxy chosen at random from billions of other galaxies in an infinite universe.
The universe is vast and may be only one of a billion other universes in the multiverse so the chances of us being 'alone' are small but the chances of other civilizations near enough to us at this present time is also extremely low. We only developed radio communication in the last century which is a tiny fraction of the history of our species, let alone other species that may have developed similar communication abilities that extend outside of our planetary home.

I think it likely that life exists elsewhere in the universe, and that it's rare enough that we have yet to find evidence of it on the small sampling of places we've been able to look. I also think it likely that simple (e.g., single cell) life is apt to be more prevalent than multicellular; plants more than animals; and that conscious, self aware, intelligent tool-makers are going to be scarcer still -- and that's just in the realm of "life as we currently know it". It is also possible that there are certain evolutionary "hard stops" that are difficult to get past, and that for any given species to survive, it must surmount more of those, the more developed and capable and versatile the species.

So I'd predict that when we have sampled most of the celestial bodies in 3 or 4 solar systems we will have found a few simple life forms in 1 or 2 other places and we'll have a somewhat better basis to extrapolate from there.

Hence I don't think it's a controversy that will be settled in my lifetime unless we discover thriving ecosystems on Mars or Enceladus, etc. that really add to our current data set, and we do that in the next few years.

Beyond that I don't engage in "believing in" anything. It's best to wait for more information before engaging in anything that should have more credence than idle speculation.

I believe that there are other cultures and civilizations beyond ours and possibly beyond our understanding. More specifically, we're under the delusion that aliens would be humanoid. That delusion should fit nice and tidy and cuddly to the delusion that we are a superior species. Our arrogance is always our downfall.

There are far too many planets and ecosystems in all of space to discredit the theory of life elsewhere in any form or function.

I'd love for this to be proven in my lifetime, but somehow I don't think it will be. In some ways believing in extra terrestrial beings and supernatural beings are similar in that both would be viewed with skepticism if they showed up at our doorstep. On the whole, I believe there's an infinite possibility of other intelligent life...not so much for a deity.

Belief has nothing to do with this. We have a pitifully small sample upon which to draw conclusions -- so we don't. The question remains open. It appears that life should be common wherever conditions would permit, but we don't know. If we find a single microbe on any other body in our solar system, the thinking on the subject will change. In the meantime, we search for signs of life. Is it possible there is life elsewhere? Yes. Is it possible that other intelligences have developed in the Universe? Yes. Is it possible that we are the only intelligence in the Universe? Yes. Is it possible that there is no other life in the Universe? Yes. So, chance, choice, pick a winner.

How could we possibly be the only planet with life? There are so many planets in the vast galaxy. It would seem to be common sense that other life would exist.

This is just a small clip of a great talk between Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Professor Richard Dawkins.
But this clip is a great answer to your question. At least it is how I think about it.

What we know is that life exists here. What we may be able to prove in the foreseeable future is that life exists elsewhere in the solar system. What we may never know is whether life exists outside the solar system. The universe is huge, and full of galaxies that are full of stars. It is just narrowly conceivable that we could launch a probe that would return a result from the nearest of these stars within my lifetime, but even if we did, that still leaves so many other stars that I couldn't even put a number on it. The long and the short of it is that this is one of those things that probably just can't be known, so all we can do is speculate, and perhaps accept certain answers on blind faith. I'm willing to accept on blind faith that there is all kinds of intelligent life in the universe, and there isn't anything particularly extraordinary about Earth. That is just my uninformed opinion, however.

I believe in polls when such questions are posed.

Well earth is a very old planet and we have a type G star which means it won't go supernova in a few million years, our star is not the standard red or orange dwarf star. But it is almost certain that single-cell life already exists on other planets and it is possible that aliens of varied amounts of scentience and life. Note that most of the life on earth no longer exists and has evolved to adapt to reduced oxygen, walking, heat/cold and many more. Plants used to be the size of trees. Humans developed language and sacrificed our short term memory when the weaker of us stopped climbing trees with our most recent shared ancestor. There is a lot of life we'll never know about because of erosion. Point being there could be planets in an earlier period with even more life then we have. I think 'life' is out there but I don't see communication within say next three human generations? Currently we're best off seeding more life in our own solar system or we'll go extinct. There is very likely methane fueled organisms on tyton but even if we figure that despite the unlikelihood that we are 'completely alone' we can still seed life on other planets and terraform. If anything it'll cut a lot of ethical barriers to doing so.
I would like to think so but I don't know.