Its been discussed and thrown around countless times on this and as well as at dinner parties and get togethers with groups of guys and gals at school reunions.
Some such as Seth Shostak believes we'll have convincing evidence of life off this Earth within 20 years. Although the definitive answer to the question is simply as yet we "Do not know" one way or the other, common sense, logic, numbers and most of all science, suggests that life is out there, somewhere, sometime...at many and all levels of developments.
Most I suppose are now aware of the new search to show we are not alone......

The comet?

If you are refering to Philaes comet then yes.

All the Amazing Stuff and Although the European Space Agency's Philae comet lander has been incommunicado since July 9, today marks what's easily one of the most significant days in the lander's lifetime. That's because scientists across the globe working with the plucky robot have just released their first wave of discoveries and scientific research collected during Philae's slow rendezvous and inadvertently bouncy landing on comet C-G last fall. The research is published in seven papers in the journal Science.

Are you asking if there is life out there?

It's estimated that there may be 250 billion galaxies in the universe, and who knows how many stars in each galaxy with planets surrounding them. There is just no way possible that we are the only life in the entire universe.

And you never know, there may be life in cold space itself getting nourishment from sunlight and never touches a planet.

What never ceases to amaze me though is how big the universe it. Just trying to comprehend it makes me dizzy.

I'm amazed you made such an incoherent yet coherent post that never actually asked the 'greatest question'.

I hope there is life on other planets, I hear they might have oil and need a little democracy sent their way.

I thought the greatest question was: What's for supper?

In any event, yes, there IS life out there. Do we recognize it as such? Possibly not. Will we meet them? Doubt it. So far, the human race has shown little progress in exploring beyond our own small system. The distances involved make it impossible for us to even send manned ships much beyond our own moon. Our technology needs to advance a LOT before we can. And even further to get beyond our own system. I don't see humans having the motivation to manage any of that yet.

What I find interesting is that many scientists make there assumptions based on "life as we know it." Do we "know" every form that life can take?

We are carbon-based lifeforms living on a carbon-based planet. Is water essential for life? What about silicone based life forms? Or some life based on a substance we know nothing about, yet. Our arrogance in assuming we are the only life-filled planet amazes me.

There is other life out there. We may just not know how to perceive it yet

Actually, the possibility of life being out there on another planet is extremely low... Like really low. Apparently, the more we "dig" into space and learn about it... The more things we learn how Earth is able to sustained life. To a point where the chance of finding another planet is so low that certain scientists are starting to believe that our existence on this planet isn't merely coincidence by chance...

Very interesting topic and I fear of going deeper into it now.

If there were only one planet, sure. Or only a hundred million. But with hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with about a billion rocky planets in the habitable zone? That makes for hundreds of quintillions (10^20) of planets where life could exist given the right preconditions.

So our base value is 10^20.

What's the chance of a planet having water? Call it one in a thousand, maybe? (10^-3)

Okay, now we've got 10^17 rocky planets with liquid water (habitable zone).

Now, recent discoveries in physics show that, given the possibility of life, organic molecules are likely to form on their own as a way of increasing entropy (life is great for that). Still kinda hard, though, so call it... meh, let's be really, really conservative and say one in a trillion (10^-12) chance that life evolves on a planet which can support it. (No way it's actually that low, it just doesn't make sense; the physicist who came up with the aforementioned theory stated that "If you shine a light on an ocean, you shouldn't be surprised when you get a plant.")

So now we have 10^5 planets in the Universe where life evolves. That's a hundred thousand living planets. And that's with some very conservative numbers. Call the chance of live evolving one in a million and you have a hundred billion planets with life. Give it a one in a thousand chance of evolving intelligence and you have a hundred million intelligent species out there.

Well i don't think the question is all that great.

There has to be life out there, from microbes, bacteria to cellular life/ I am 100% there is also advanced life like what we have here in Earth. There is just way to many galaxies and stars in our universe that it's impossible that we are the only advanced form of life. If this happened in our galaxy i am sure it has or is happening in other galaxies.

Will we ever make contact? That's the greastest question. Will we make contact or will they make contact? And i am not even talking about signals. I am talking about face to face meeting with each other.

Honestly i don't really think there is type 2 or type 3 civilations. Because if they existed they would have already explored this star system. Or we would have already seen flying spaceships all over the galaxy. Plus then there is the Great Filter Theory.

Plus i don't think we will even last that long. We already have Nuclear Technology that one day could make us go extinct.

Human race will probably only last 1000 - 2000 years more.

Will we ever discover a new technology? Yes we will. Will we get to use it? No we won't. Why? Extinction.

i swear to god if the only other life form out in space is bunnies.....

I know that Stefan Hawkings is leading a new research into extraterrestrial life, and that he's pretty damn sure that other life forms are out there somewhere.

I also know that he thinks it's probably a bad idea to come across them.