Sure, low level plankton based, or something fun like a pathogen.

Let the probing begin.

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I just hope we don't find a sith temple underneath.

No. Aliens aren't mentioned in the Bible, so they don't exist.

nvm

Some things are disturbing though:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-military-keeps-encountering-ufos-why-doesnt-the-pentagon-care/2018/03/09/242c125c-22ee-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.d8369007b0a3

I just want to demonstrate how an argument of "great numbers" is a fallacy when it comes to prove/disprove something. Now, I'm not going to argue whether aliens exists or not, I just want to show that "there are X items, therefore one of them must be Y" is a false argument, without knowing the actual probability of Y.

Consider a school where every kid was given an Euromillions lottery ticket. The next day, a 6-year old says to his parents "I can't wait for them to annouce which kid in our school won the lottery!" "Well, probably nobody" his parents say. "But how can that be??" says the kid "The school if full of classes all the way from grade 1 to A-levels. And there are tens of students in each class. Surely someone must have won."

By simply repeating there are billions/zillions/kajillions number of stars in the galaxy, if we do not know the actual probability of "winning" then we are just like this kid.

That's the problem with large numbers; they become difficult to image, and we start thinking "oh it's bajillion". "It's infinitely large". But ultimately they are just finite numbers and one "bajillion" can be to another "bajillion" like a grain of sand compared to the sun.

So, I'm going to give an example using the numbers mentioned here. 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 seems like a huge number.
Now (and this is just an example), lets assume that for life to exist on a planet there are 20 factors (temperature, humidity... etc). For each factor there is a 5% chance that it would be "right" for life to start, and if all 20 factors are "right" then that planet will have life. Then the probability of a planet being "right" for life is 1 in 10^26, which is more that 10 thousand times larger than our 70,000.... etc
If we decrease the %age to 2% per factor, the number becomes 10^34, which is a thousand billion times larger than the number of stars. A THOUSAND BILLION!!!!

Or consider each planet having a 10x10 chessboard with each square being randomly black or white. And someone says "well! With soooooo many stars and planets, surely one must have a chessboard that's exactly like the one on earth!"
Do the maths...

Again, this is not saying that aliens don't exists. I'm just pointing out the fallacy of throwing large numbers. Without the probability of life forming, these numbers are meaningless. And can life form easily? There are indications that yes (looking at cellular automatons for example strongly indicates so). But there are also indications to the contrary. The truth is, that given our limited resources (we only have "access" to the few planets in our solar system) it's difficult to conduct reliable simulations for the time being.

No it isn't, and no it doesn't. God created the universe and he made earth a unique place within it.

There are no such thing as aliens. However, there are demons (fallen angels) who masquerade themselves as UFOs & aliens.

Same thing. Believe in alien life somewhere, don't believe in UFO conspiracies.

I have to say that people often look at it the wrong way though. As if intelligent life is the end goal of the universe. Like the universe wants to produce intelligent life. That the point of a star is to have planets, and the point of a planet is to be inhabitable, and the point of life is to evolve into self-aware intelligent beings; and a star without planets is a failed star, a planet that is uninhabitable is a failed planet, and any lifeform that didn't evolve to use tools and invent writing, etc. is either still trying or the losers of natural selection. I guess it's just tempting for humans to think of themselves in this way, and less like they are a freak accident.

In probability terms, it's the difference between "Wow! That was a million in one shot but you made it!", and "I left this arrow on a table when a sudden storm came in and the wind blew the arrow away and carried it for hundreds of yards, it blasted a window open, the arrow flew through it, and there just happened to be an archery target lying in there, and the arrow just happened to hit the bullseye. Can you believe it?"

So, yeah, the argument that the universe is almost inconceivably large and, as such, there are probably other intelligent lifeforms out there, is sound, but the harsh truth is: there's probably way less of it than we might think, and odds are all of us will go extinct before we ever come close to running into each other.

this thread is seriously scaring the shit out of me :P

Sometimes I see spots of light in my peripheral vision and like to imagine that it's the malfunctioning camouflage of an alien who's keeping tabs on me. Then I run over swatting at the air to try and catch it, but it's always really good at parkour and gets away. Probably just a migraine thing combined with an overactive imagination and a soupçon of paranoia.

I think there are better questions anyway:

Would we think less of them if they're not glamorous Avatar-esque aliens?
Are our societies at a point where we could make contact with intelligent alien life without feeling like a failure?
How are we going to keep Bioware employees from trying to romance them?

There's that whole issue that our galaxy seems to be quiet...no transmissions or other signs from alien civs detectable.
This could of course mean several things...there are no advanced alien civs because they self-destruct through nuclear war, environmental degradation etc. Or are culled by some super-predatory alien species eliminating all potential competitors.
Or maybe if there are such civs, they've learned to keep quiet to avoid just that.
Or maybe there just is no advanced life somewhere else, only bacteria or really simple lifeforms.

More or less what Breja said. It's fascinating to speculate sure. After all, what famous men of the cosmos haven't speculated? Steven Hawking, Carl Sagan, and so on.

Three things I try to keep in mind when thinking about the topic of extraterrestrial life: 1) The sheer vastness of the universe. 2) The relatively young age of the universe. 3) The fact that life exists here.

I think it is likely that extraterrestrial life has existed, does exist and/or will come into existence.

I think it is unlikely that extraterrestrial life has ever visited or will ever visit Earth.