Firstly, for any life to live on a planet the temperature has to be just right, (Not too hot nor too cold). Plus, for any life to exist elsewhere anyway, they would have to learn not to destroy themsleves with their own technology. Even if there is life out there, it could be tiny, or huge. Who knows? We will just have to wait until the future commences. We are pretty lucky to have a planet like we have now. But the future says the Sun will become a Red Giant, burning all planets in this galaxy up to Mars. That would of course destroy any life possibilities on Mars.

We will have to rely on thoses daring astronauts, or those great probes.

Quote from Zed

You miss the point. He's not dividing the number of planets by anything. He's dividing the number of inhabited ones by the total number of planets, ie. a finite number divided by infinity, which gets you the average population of each planet. Since anything divided by infinity is so close to zero it makes no odds, the average population of each planet is zero. The total population of the universe is the sum of the populations of each planet - zero plus zero plus zero....... Therefore the population of the universe is zero.

The real reason it doesn't work is that there is not an infinite number of planets.

I'm not saying there's an infinite number, but there's so many ****ing planets/systems/nebulae/galaxies that we would never ever in all of out greatest dreams be able to count them all.

Of course. The universe being what it is, that's almost taken for granted. But an incredibly tiny number of those planets are suited for life, and even if life evolves it probably won't become sophisticated enough to monitor life elsewhere.

Quote from Sumfink

But an incredibly tiny number of those planets are suited for life

And you know this how?

Quote from Scarecrow

if we assume that the universe is infinite, then there is an infinite number of planets. if we look at our planet and say that it is the only one with life, then we are saying that our planet is 1/infinite. That isn't possible. There's no such thing as 1/infinite. Even if there were a billion planets with life, we'd be saying that these are 1,000,000,000/infinite. Still impossible. The only sensible conclusion is that there is an infinite number of planets with life, because only then does it make sense; infinite/infinite = 1 = an existing answer

disclaimer: i am entirely aware that my reasoning here is massively flawed but we'll soon find out who realizes this


so yeah

but the universe is obviously finite, and infinite universe is impossible.

Humans are very egotistical to believe we are the only speck of life in the endless reaches of the universe.I believe there is something out there, somewhere,even if it is just bacteria or microscopic.It is life.

There might just be life in another galaxy, or even on Mars. Scientists will be magnifying deep into soils looking for signs of tiny life. Remember, life could be huge, or tiny. Who knows.