Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Earth-size Kepler-186f

NASA ^ | April 19, 2014 | (see photo credit)

[Vaquero]

Then their is the Murcheson meteorite which plowed into Australia in 1969.

Murchison contains common amino acids such as glycine, alanine and glutamic acid as well as unusual ones like isovaline and pseudoleucine. A complex mixture of alkanes was isolated as well, similar to that found in the Miller–Urey experiment. Serine and threonine, usually considered to be earthly contaminants, were conspicuously absent in the samples. A specific family of amino acids called diamino acids was identified in the Murchison meteorite as well

I'm not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, but between this, the clouds of stuff like ethanol floating through space and the ‘Drake Equation’, I would say the chances are pretty good for life to exist elsewhere in the galaxy. (Other life in the solar system is a given to me as chunks of this globe have been scattered via asteroid and comet strikes throughout the system for 4.5 billion years and extremophiles can withstand the vacuum of space and places like Europa and Enceladus are ripe for colonization )

[Vinnie]

Guess I should have incorporated the /s tag.

[crazylibertarian]

But then also, when you write ‘intelligent life such as our own,’ are you sure we qualify as intelligent life? We elected Barack H. Obama president. (Yuk! Yuk! Yuk!)

[Telepathic Intruder]

I never suggested that voters for Obama were intelligent.

[HartleyMBaldwin]

Or I should have.

[TheOldLady]

Wow! All that and only 500 light years away!

I better pack.

[martin_fierro]

the distant world orbits its parent star, a cool, dim, M dwarf star