Most of the stars you see when you look up at night formed in the same way our Sun was formed. All the asteroids, comets, moons, and planets in our solar system are leftovers of the formation of the Sun. This tells us that it isn't farfetched to imagine that other stars have planets as well, in fact we discovered the first planet orbiting another star in 1995 and have discovered others as well. It's starting to seem like most stars in our galaxy have at least one planet orbiting them.
People often think that humans are special, or that the Earth is special. But the more we learn about the universe the more it seems like life is abundant out there. Whether life spreads in the universe through Panspermia or if it's just an inevitable consequences of certain conditions found in star systems, life happens without a doubt since we are living proof of it, as is every other living organism on this planet.
So we know life exists in the universe - us. It isn't farfetched to imagine that there is more life out there, even in our own Milky Way galaxy where there are billions of stars and possibly billions of planets.
"If life is so abundant, where is it?" some ask. Well, there are a few things to understand. Considering stars eventually die out, any life in a star system who's star has 'died' may have also died with it - unless it managed to evolve technologically, escape into space, and colonize other places on other stars. Life has existed on Earth for billions of years and only fairly recently has a species like us evolved into existence. Just because a planet has the conditions to support life, it may not necessarily mean that life will exist. Or if life does end up existing, it doesn't mean that it will evolve into such capable species as humans. And even if a species as capable as us has come into existence somewhere in the Milky Way, maybe they didn't live on their planet responsibly (something humans should start doing) and became extinct. Intelligent life that has found a way to survive in space, without the need to be on their home planet, is probably the rarest kind and possibly why we haven't been visited yet.
Some claim that, when looking for life in the universe, we must be careful since we do not know if aliens are hostile, and that contacting them may cause wars between us. This is a valid concern, but one that shouldn't worry us too much. Wars are commonly due to resources, territory expansion, and even religious beliefs. But if an extraterrestrial civilization has managed to travel the vast distances between our planet and theirs, it is highly doubtful that they came all the way here just for Earth's resources. As was stated before, there is nothing too special about Earth. What do the aliens want, food? Space travel, as we know it, takes an enormous amounts of time. It would take 80,000 years to travel to the nearest star (Proxima Centauri) at the speed of the Voyager spacecraft (37,000 miles/hour). With that distance between us, and taking so long to reach us, they would already have had to figure out a way to produce food and recycle dirty water into clean water for survival. If they did happen to run out of water and came to our splendid solar system for a refill, Europa (one of Jupiter's moons) has plenty. And Ceres (a dwarf-planet orbiting between Mars and Jupiter) seems to have a lot of water as well. Both of these objects mentioned are much smaller than Earth, so it even seems like it would be less of a hassle to get out of their orbit when compared to Earth. Do they need metals? Mining Asteroids would do the trick. Realizing this, we shouldn't have to be too concerned about hostile aliens invading us for our planet's resources.
By understanding that many alien civilizations may have failed before humans even existed, one may begin to wonder what the fate of our species will be. Will we become just another civilization that came, had a moment of existence, but due to political or economical reasons never managed to align itself with the natural flow of its planet? Or will we become one of the rarer kind of civilizations, the kind that manages to move past cultural differences and managed to live a sustainable lifestyle? Only time will tell, but the odds remain in favor that we are not alone in our galaxy, let alone in the universe, and we shouldn't wait around for aliens to come show us how to properly live on our planet (or to destroy us) - after all, the information and technology which would allow all human to live better lives is already available to us, it just isn't applied due to barriers inherent in the current established social system.
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