It’s also possible we are a fluke and literally no other intelligent life exists anywhere in the universe and never will again for a long long long time

Life started here with stardust and the perfect environment. It's silly to think that the stardust that made us didn't find its way to other compatible planets as well.

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If you're interested in this topic, Anthropic Principle, is a good place to start.

It's very challenging to say. People have tried to ballpark it, concepts like Drake's Equation. But they all rely on assumptions that we're really not capable of asserting.

Still, it does allow us to consider the topic in ways that are more fruitful than just random consideration. After all, as technology progresses, we do become better at defining many of the assumptions, giving us a more accurate range in which to find intelligent life.

I think most considered people accept that life in the Universe is robust. Intelligent life however?

That's a much harder thing to say, because it requires a lot of things to go just right. Many of which (Abiogenesis) we don't even understand.

So we search. But that poses its own unique set of challenges. The issues of searching such a vast area for signs of intelligent life.

A lot of really smart work has gone into narrowing bands of information that we'd expect to see from intelligent life. From particular radio frequencies to different combinations of chemistry that would be challenging to reproduce naturally.

But still. The Universe is beyond massive. Needle in a haystack isn't the appropriate comparison. Needle in a haystack of a sky full of haystacks is the more apt one.

It's not that we haven't found intelligent life out there, it's that the aliens haven't found intelligent life here. There's no interest in us, yet. Maybe one day many, many yrs from now. But now, we're infants. We do nothing of interest to them

So, I agree with you that life is likely out there and in abundance given the vastness of the universe. (Even if I think it’s very equally improbably that advanced intelligent life has visit Earth 😂). Refer to Drake’s equation that whittles down that high probability to possibly 0.

That said, your question of “what would it look like” has been addressed by Carl Sagan in his old Cosmos series. Considering that humans and a tree share 25% of the same DNA yet are unrecognizably different, you can safely conclude that an alien species that shares 0% of our DNA (or any DNA at all) would be entirely different. So forget those movies where humanoid aliens are bipedal or look like giant insects!

So Sagan and other xenobiologists rely on convergent evolution theories — like why a shark and a dolphin have similar “flippers” — to speculate on life forms that rely on various environments (gravity, water, temperature, atmosphere, orbit and rotation, radiation, primary star type and distance, living energy transfer, available minerals, etc etc etc) yet might have evolved similar solutions to life here on Earth.

…or it would look more different to us than a virus or amoeba does.

Never give up on knowledge as beyond us! We are always finding new ways to search. People looked like real psychos trying to fly for, presumably, all of human history. Until someone figured it out.

Also possible, yes, but not even close to equally probable.

The universe has a long long long time to wait

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I remember some of the evolutionary terms from my college biology course, like convergent, divergent, etc. But that course strictly concerned life on Earth. I think it's awesome that there are scientists who study these things.

My comment isn’t nearly as deep as your post but I’m still going to share a conversation I had with a good friend around a campfire one night staring up at a pin cushion evening sky. We talked about aliens and my friend said he would freak out if a alien ship landed in front of us…like a total mental breakdown. I responded by saying I would love to witness such a thing. I wouldn’t even care if they set their guns to vaporize…as long as I got my answer finally. Still feel that way.

Any chance you could point out that other stardust planet. I’m looking to make a move.

I’m sure there is life in the galaxy. Us finding it in our lifetime is still unlikely. Our radio only exists a hundred years. If other life has discovered radio today but live 1000 Lightyear away, we won’t discover them any time soon. Or if they discovered it 10000 years ago but live 20000 Lightyear away …..

Xenobiologist. Earth is their only pitri dish, so they study all the extreme environments and understand the life that lives in them. Including sources of energy other than starlight. It’s important foundational work for the Mars and future missions on how to even identify and define “life” and potentially find microbial life in our own solar system. And whether that life could survive planet hopping from collisions. The Earth constantly passes through extraplanetary meteor debris.

Yeah, I kind of pigeon holed the discussion by referring strictly to "intelligent life", but any life would be great to identify. Isn't there some evidence that life existed on Mars?

Haha I've had conversations like that before. In a way we're so isolated but at the same time surrounded by a massive universe. If that happened I don't know how I'd react. But in that nearly impossible hypothetical world I'd probably want to ask questions. Though there's far better minds than mine to ask questions.

It’s all circumstantial and debatable. The Mars meteors with embedded gasses that “can only be explained through microbial life” has been disputed/explained as well.

The headlines are sensationalized but after it’s actually published, peer reviewed, and counter argued — well, those don’t make the front page 🤷‍♂️

That’s true, but we don’t know enough to say it’ll ever happen again. We just don’t. People say “surely it MUST happen again” but basically the universe and other life is Schrödinger’s cat. Or… Schrödinger’s Alien?