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At this point in time, I don't know. I think that it is almost impossible that life hasn't existed somewhere else in the universe, at some point, in the billions of years that it has existed.

The Fermi paradox says yes. Whether we ever meet them or not is a far different question.

The only answer either of you should be arguing is that it's not know yet

No way to know.

Going off of pure probability I would be surprised if there's nothing at all out there, but going of off the sheer size of the universe I'd also be surprised if we ever encountered an extraterrestrial lifeform,let alone civilization

The universe is unbelievably vast. There are over 100 billion stars in our Galaxy, and billions of galaxies in the Universe.

The odds are that somewhere out there there is life. In the billions of trillions of planets it’s not just likely but almost certain.

Not known, and they surely aren't visiting earth.

Us being alive are proof that life can exist on a planet. To deny that it could happen on other planets only shows a denial of science.

When people say life, do they mean intelligent, and if so define intelligent. Or are we talking microbial, or something?

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No they don't unfortunately. You can let your friend know.

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We still can't know but I just can't imagine the universe being this endless and we are the only ones in it, it doesn't make any sense to me, I find it significantly easier to believe that there is life out there than there isn't.

We don’t know. There is no solid evidence for or against it. Statistically speaking there could be. The universe is a BIG place after all. Then again, the chances of life successfully forming, especially making it to any sentient level, are exceedingly small.

The important question is not if other life exist in the universe. The important question is if it matters. Personally, I think it doesn’t matter at all. Unless there is another space faring civilization that has a way to directly reach us or contact us in any meaningful way, who cares?

It isn’t worth the argument imo. Agree to disagree and move on.

Only if the quantum observer wrote them into the program.

We dont know.
We dont even know the chances. We have two variables that we know

1. We exist.
2. We know of no other life beyond Earth.
   Beyond this everything is suppositions and guesses. We may be a 1 in 100 trillion fluke.
   We may be in a Universe teaming with life we cannot see.
   Every other answer to this is loaded with assumptions, many of them assumptions in fields the assumer does not understand.
   The answer to your question is that it is a deep question, a deep one that requires huge amounts of science to be done on.
   The only solution will be for us to roll up our sleeves and work hard across many fields.

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You also don't know that. Why would they reveal themselves to us if they did?

Yes, I am an alien. I decided to blow my cover for this thread. Hi.

The probability of alien life (microbial to multicellular) is far greater than the remote possibility of advanced/intelligent alien life that we can contact/communicate. So they are very different thresholds. In fact I think the former is close to 100% while the latter is close to 0% precisely because space is so large.

Either we’re the only ones in this unimaginably vast universe, or there’s an unimaginable amount of life spread throughout the universe.

I think it’s extremely unlikely we’re the only planet with life.

There are 125 billion galaxies in the universe we’ve found so far. If life can evolve and start in our tiny Milky Way galaxy…there’s literally no chance there isn’t life out there somewhere

I think it's really important to distinguish between "intelligent life" and just "life", because these are two vastly different questions.

Life is, I think, going to be everywhere. I think we'll find evidence of it on Mars, I think it might well be in the clouds of Venus (surprisingly good place for life to evolve, actually) and it's almost certainly below the ice on Europa, I'd bet a considerable sum on that. As for outside of the solar system,. then it's just math, we can be fairly certain there's life "somewhere", if not in the Milky Way, which is a lot of stars, then certainly in other galaxies, which represent orders of magnitude more stars.

But intelligent life? That might be really rare. Just look at how smart we are, compared to the next smartest creates (Corvids, dolphins, elephants, ants); it's not even close, their best tool is a stick and we have robots on Mars. We're so much smarter than anything else in nature.

Our intelligence is an aberration, and honestly represents as great a leap forward mentally as "wings" did for insects or "breathing air" did for fish / amphibians. It's a giant leap, and it might be statistically unlikely enough that we're alone in the Milky Way. It'd be silly to posit we're alone in the universe, no matter the odds, there's too many chances for something comparable to us not to exist somewhere else, but we might genuinely be alone in our galaxy, which as far as observation / communication / travel might as well be everything there is, we're never going to Andromeda, that's not going to be a thing.

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Given the vastness of space, probably so. Given the speed of light, we'll probably never know.

The universe is so vast and we are so tiny that it would be incredibly difficult for us to figure that out with how little we can actually see. I remember watching a video that basically explained it like this the fact that we haven’t found anything after sending out signals for hundreds of years probably means that we are either still in the very early stages of sentience or there are no other sentient beings to return signals

Mathematically speaking, it’s impossible for there not be aliens

Life? Absolutely. Intelligent life? Maybe. Intelligent life that we could one day reach/contact is pretty uncertain at the moment. Definitely impossible given our current technology unless they came to us.

I don’t understand how someone could think no life exists in the entire Universe. Now, I can get on board with intelligent life being rare on a galaxy wide basis but the Universe is so incredibly vast and possibly even of infinite size. How could it be possible that life, even microbial life, hasn’t existed anywhere else ever?

Look up the Drake Equation. It will give you some more detailed starting points. Then also read this xkcd comic. It has something important to say about the discussion that unfortunatly does not affect the answer at all, but is still funny.

I've seen some crazy things in my time. Including UFOs. One of which was a flying saucer. My wife was in the garden with me and saw it too so, not a hallucination. She's a pretty hardcore skeptic and was a little shook, lol.

Can't speak on who built it or who/what was in it, but after all the other impossible things I've seen I'm ready to admit anything is possible.

There is a way to know, we exist. Not only do we exist there are millions of species on a single planet.

It's either God is real or there are other beings in the universe.

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Drake's equation says* yes.

Fermi's paradox is only a question; If advanced life is so common in the universe, then why is there no evidence of it outside Earth?

*Drake's equation doesn't actually say yes. Different people have used it to different results with some indicating the number of civilizations per galaxy are well below 1 and others saying it's as high as 10,000 per galaxy. It assumes too much likelihood of complex events we don't know enough about to definitively say anything.

>There is a way to know, we exist.

That is not proof that it has happened again, or happened before. I'm a firm believer that life does exist on other planets somewhere in the universe, but without knowing exactly what is required for life to form, the likelihood of abiogenesis, the likelihood that life would form.

Using Drake's equation you could get results as low as 1 advanced civilization per 1 quadrillion galaxies, implying we are likely alone, to as high as millions of civilizations in the Milky Way alone.

Just because something has happened does not mean it's likely to ever happen again. If I won the lottery, it would not prove that I was likely to do so again let alone that I definitively would.

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>there are millions of species on a single planet

As life on Earth evolved from common beginnings, this does not prove likelihood of intelligence arising (or even life arising.) If anything, it demonstrates how rare the evolution of highly intelligent life is. It took millions of tries for evolution to produce a single highly intelligent lifeform capable of communicating over vast distances and transiting off it's host planet.