Hello? Is There Anybody Out There?

This, is space:

It's pretty neat, eh? And to think, we know almost nothing about it. Sure, we have a number of theories, ideas and a few facts about the universe, but the unknowns are much more overwhelming. We only know what we can experience or model or even theorize based on our galaxy and the planet earth. With over a 100 billion galaxies and give or take 10^22 stars in the universe, the milky way is just a tiny blip in the endless expanse known as outer space. We're like a grain of rice in the ocean, maybe even smaller and more insignificant than that even!

Let's think about this for a second, we are one of a billion galaxies and we have 8 planets (9 if you're a traditionalist and 10 if you're a modernist), only one of which has sustainable life as we know it. That's earth, for those who are wondering! Wondering where I'm going with all this? Well, I want to talk about extra terrestrials. ET!

Here's the funny thing about it all, we're looking at other planets and superimposing our definition of "life" onto them in hopes we'll find traces of other "living" things out there. We're using the earth as a model for all life, theorizing that the building blocks that allow us to live on earth, must be present on other planets in order for life to exist there. So, right away I'm forced to wonder if perhaps, we're looking at the wrong sorts of things. I'm not a biologists or chemist or astrophysicist, but isn't possible that "life" could exist outside of the parameters that we exist under? Maybe, maybe not, but to discount life on other planets based on our observations is terribly naive.

Of all the galaxies out there, there are bound to be more planets, and likely more life. They probably won't look like this:

Or this:

And hopefully not like this:

Regardless, there must be life out there. Without a doubt. It's impossible to say if extra terrestrials would be intelligent or primitive or something completely unfathomable to us. We may never know though. The universe is just so huge!

What are your thoughts? Come on brave blog visitors, let me know what you think.