Recently NASA announced that they'd 'discovered' water on (or rather under, way, way under) Mars. There followed the usual hoopla about life on other planets, we're not alone etc.

Less attention was paid to a recent paper which, using the old Drake equation, came to the conclusion that its very likely that we are alone in the Milky Way galaxy and (with slightly less certainty) probably alone in the observable universe.

The paper is called "Dissolving the Fermi Paradox" and can be found here...http://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404.pdf

The Fermi Paradox is the conundrum as to why we haven't seen any evidence of other advanced civilisations when, at least in the past, the Drake equation suggested that there ought to be 1000's out there.

Indeed when SETI was first established, its main proponents were pretty certain they'd find such evidence within a decade. Now, 50years down the track, they still haven't found a skerrick of data to suggest anything other than we are alone in the universe are the only species to have reach our leave of advancement. (queue all those who will show how 'woke' they are by denying we are advanced).

The new paper took the approach of allocating ranges of probability to each element in the equation based on the latest research. For example, over the past decade, biologists have increasingly opined that the origin of eukaryotic cells was vastly more unlikely than previously thought and that indeed it may have happened only once in the 4 billion year history of earth.

A few more links to go on with...
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/27/aliens-exist-survival-universe-jim-alkhalili

I've always been a fan of the Great Filter idea...

http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/greatfilter.html

Hi there MHAZE...

I had a quick look at the first reference you kindly gave us (the Fermi Paradox) a mathematical equation of determining whether we are alone, or otherwise, in our universe? A thoroughly interesting document if you can understand it, of course?

On a personal level, 'Space' if I may call it that, or 'Deep Space' to be more precise, far beyond what we here on earth, can see or imagine. On the balance of probability, should have some form of 'existence' or 'life' on them, considering the immensity of deep space, which were are told, goes on indefinitely?

Obviously I don't have the brains or imagination to grapple with such unknown quantities, or mathematical equations - being very much a pragmatists, I find it enormously difficult to embrace a topic such as this, without making a fool of myself. A very very interesting topic nevertheless, and I thank you for it.

The universe is very big:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe#Size_and_regions

I suspect that they probably are out there somewhere... I am less convinced of the likelihood us of ever finding them (or them finding us).

yep to ignore what we can see and know and spend billions on fantasy is the way of the god deniers.

Now I am getting really upset.

How can you people possibly suggest that Star Trek & Star Wars are not true!

//How can you people possibly suggest that Star Trek & Star Wars are not true!//

They are part of the science fiction genre. The clue is kind of in the name.