this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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All of this is layman with some basic understanding only.
So, on the one hand in our galaxy alone there are between 100 and 400 billion stars (wikipedia), now a lot of those have no planets, but of course a lot have many more than our system does. So at least the same number in planets. There's a good chance there's more than one planet capable to supporting life among that number.
In fact as we improve our ability to observe our galaxy we are able to verify more and more viable planets and even a reasonable number that are similar to our own planet.
This means that there's definitely going to be a reasonable chance that somewhere, life has evolved to similar or beyond our level already.
But, this for sure doesn't mean there's any reason to expect visitors. That's because even if they can travel at the speed of light, it's still going to be thousands of years for the majority of them to reach us, provided they even choose to come to us. Because, from where they are they wouldn't be able to make out our radio signals, nor likely any other signs of life. So we'd be one of many "potentially live bearing" planets.
So, just my opinion. I think the chance of life being out there is reasonably high, the chance of actually being visited (assuming it holds true that we cannot travel faster than light) is probably very very low.