Are We Alone?

We live out in the middle of nowhere. Out where the streetlights and all the other lights in a town or city don't affect your view of the night sky. Lily and I go out a night every night. Her for that last pee before bed and me, well I just like to look up at the sky. I look up and I wonder. Are we alone? Is there any other life out there? Not just intelligent life, any life at all. You look around our world and life springs up in every possible space and some places where we think it couldn't possibly exist. We point giant dishes at the sky and scan every possible radio frequency hoping for something more than static. So far, nothing. You ask about sightings from the general public, close encounters of the third or fourth kind. Where is the definitive proof? A crashed ship? Roswell, New Mexico? Really?  1947? You really believe the government of the United States could keep that secret for over 60 years. You have more faith in our government than I do. We already know shit our government did that we shouldn't know and honestly didn't want to know. So I look up at the night sky and wonder.

This is a view from Earth of the thicker part of our galaxy. Millions of stars. Life?

The Hubble space telescope is able to see back 13 billion years. The edge of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field.

It looks like stars but this is a picture of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Almost every point of light in that picture is a galaxy. Millions of galaxies with billions or trillions of stars. The universe is a big place. How could we be alone?

Somewhere in that vast beauty there has to be someone. Maybe?

This is a strange planet. Knocked 23 degrees off its verticle axis by a collision during its formation we have 4 seasons. We are close enough to the sun to have liquid water. Far enough from the sun to have moderate temperatures. Small enough to have reasonable gravity. Large enough to have enough gravity to retain our atmosphere. So many little things had to go right and they all did. A chance in a billion, a trillion or more. Look at how big the universe is. It has to have happened somewhere else. Or did it?

Until we have an answer like untold generations before me, I will continue to look up at the night sky and wonder. Are we alone?