Yes, what if. What if the universe is a giant fish-bowl of existence, contained by something else, run by something else, dictated by something else.

Actually, what I've always wondered if there was intelligent life anywhere in the neighboring cosmos, specifically in our arm of the Milky Way that we'd have any hope of ever contacting.

The odds are staggering both ways, and our ignorance helps ensure we cannot even begin to answer the question.

Think of it this way. In our solar system, we reside in a habitable zone around a fairly stable star. Get too close, and you end up like Venus - a ball of greenhouse gases under immense pressure and temperature. Get too far away, and you turn into a dry desert world like Mars.

Now did Mars or Venus ever have life? Probably - but most likely it was simple life. Neither planet remained in a zone that was conducive to continued development of that life. When you think about how long it took just for animals to appear on the planet, the numbers are staggering. Literally, for 3 billions years nothing more than simple bacteria and algae existed on this world.

3 billion years. A planet has to remain in a somewhat constant state of habitability for that long in order for complex life to develop.

Or so we think. One of the problems is we only have one Earth and one Solar System to go on when making assumptions.

But there are other factors as well - factors that have only recently come to light. For instance, the very make-up of planets in our solar system saves us from many catostrophic impact events. Jupiter sized worlds help "sweep-up" the solar system of destructive asteroids and comets.

And then there's the issue of plate tectonics, which seem to be more and more important to keeping a stable and habitable planet. Not only do plate movements (subduction, induction) help with the recycling of raw materials and the carbon-cycle on the world, but the cause of plate tectonics (our molten core) also leads to our protective magnetic field that helps deflect harmful flares from the sun.

Furthermore, our place in the galaxy is lucky as well. We're in an arm, not in too dense of an area, pretty safe from supernova and gamma-ray burts. Most likely, the center of a galaxy is not a good place for life to develop, given the density of stars and the tendancy for them to be big and unstable giants.

Now, the milky way is pretty huge - 500 BILLION stars. We could go through the whole Drake equation, but there are still too many unknowns. It's a safe bet though there are only about 10% of all stars in 10% of the entire galaxy that are conducive to life developing. Of course, there are billions of other galaxies, each islands of possibilities, but us even communicating with them is a moot point.

One other thing to think about is the unlikely-hood that 2 close civilizations would develop the means to communicate with each other at the same time. In the vast hitory of the cosmos, it is totally conceivable that a close civilization could have reached its' peak millions or billions of years ago, and now be totally extinct.

It's a big place out there, with lots of time, and oodles of uncertaintity.

Kinda sobering, isn't it?