Question: Are we alone in the universe?

There is an equation, the Drake Equation – (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation), that tries to answer this question by estimating the chances of the diffent things needed for an advanced alien civilisation to occur. The problem with the equation is that we don’t know and can only guess with very little confidence the values of most of the terms in it.We’re getting a better idea of at least some of them through newer and better telescopes. The latest space missions to Mars and Jupiter, and observations of Venus, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and their moons will help us better estimate some more. If even the most primitive life exists or once existed in our own solar system, then the chances of life outside our system, and with it the chance of intelligent life, goes up enormously. If life doesn’t and never existed anywhere in the solar system but here, then the chances fall hugely.

Some of the other factors are difficult because we only have our own example to fall back on – for example “what share of civilisations develop technologies that send detectable signals into space?”. So far we only know of our own and we’re noisy enough that, if we have neighbours, they probably wish we’d be quiet. Another “How long does an advanced civilisation last for?” I hope we don’t find out. If we do we’ll be too busy trying to survive to care about solving the Drake Equation.

With countless stars in the sky it would seem almost impossible that we are the only ones looking at the night sky and asking this question, but it is possible that the chance of getting the right planet around the right star in the right part of the galaxy, and for evolution to follow the right pathways to create an intelligence high enough to ask the question, are simply so low that we are separated by such distances of space and time that we never find each other. Or it may be that we are amongst the first, it takes time to build up the elements and arrange them in the ways needed to build up a rocky planet and person to stand on it. Perhaps we just need to be patient.

Until we do find life in abundance elsewhere then the life we have here has to be treated as even more rare and precious. For all we know it’s all there is and all there may ever be.