Is there life out there in space?
Our planet is one in the universe that supports life. It has been estimated by those interested that there are between 1 billion and 30 billion planets in our galaxy alone; and about 100 billion galaxies in the universe. For the sake of conservatism we can say that there are 1 billion billion planets in the universe. Suppose life was so improbable that it only occurred in 1 in a billion planets–odds which are bloody ridiculous. Then bearing in mind that there could be a billion billion planets (actually more); statistically speaking, life similar to that of ours would still be present in around a billion planets. This estimate is known as the planetary version of the ‘anthropic principle’. This suggests that there might be life similar to ours out there, based purely on statistics. I do think however that there are more significant things to think about.
