boovidge wrote:It's bloody interesting though.However it was created the universe is a fucking masterpiece. Hopefully they'll find out alot more about other solar systems and planets in my lifetime.
I study Physics and Space research at Birmingham Uni and i happen to know there are more extra-solar (outside our solar system) planets being discovered all the time. Until fairly recently nobody knew for sure whether or not any other stars have planets orbiting them. With new astornomical methods it has been shown that a large proportion of them do. At the moment though its only possible to infer the existence of Jupiter sized and larger planets around other stars, since small rocky planets like ours are harder to measure.
There is at least one space mission in the design process at the moment which will decrease the minimum size of planet that we are able to detect however, and so we may know soon whether there are Earth-like planets outside our solar system!
I believe that the existence of planets around other stars, and hopefully soon the proven existence of rocky planets around other stars, combined with the vast number of stars in our Galaxy alone makes the existence of extra-terrestrial life a distinct possibility. Even though it requires a very specific set of circumstances for life to begin on a planet, say 10 million to 1, there may be so many planets within our galaxy that this becomes more like 10 million to 100 million, i.e. more likely than not.
As to how we might communicate with any extra-terrestrial life given the huge distances and hence time delays between us and even our nearest neighbouring stars, well ive no idea. Doesn't stop me believing it could exist though!
!! All i need now is some cardboard boxes 
