The Universe is teeming with life. In fact, it may be teeming with civilizations containing a wide spectrum of highly evolved beings. Such statements should provide no more alarm to an inhabitant of earth as the notion that nearly every inch of land and sea is teeming with micro-organisms. Twenty years ago, however, the scientific climate was a lot different: the community of biologists, astronomers, chemists, and physicists felt such public beliefs were akin to professional suicide. Yet there was always an understanding that the baroque numbers of cosmology almost demanded such a conclusion. The billions of galaxies which compose our Universe each contain a billion star systems. Even if only a small fraction of these systems contain exo-planets, the odds are statistically that life would have developed somewhere. Today, geologists may have found a microscopic fossil from a Martian meteorite and evidence water on the moon, Mars, Europa, and other bodies in our solar system. In October 2009 astronomers at the University of Washington that the first earth-size planet, CoRoT-7b, a volcanic and desolate rock located 480 light years from earth in the constellation Monoceres. As techniques to observe these small worlds improve, the paradigm of human uniqueness in the cosmos continues to shatter. Are we truly alone or, when compared to other life forms in the Universe, are we simply the norm?
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