text: Intelligent life across the Milky Way – why 200 billion stars can't be lifeless
  http://www.space.news/2015-09-22-intelligent-life-across-the-milky-way-why-200-billion-stars-cant-be-lifeless
  My article published yesterday about 56 billion "habitable" planets in the Milky Way galaxy touched a nerve with a few people on Facebook (see source below). They apparently believe that, yes, there is a Creator who created our universe, and yes, that intelligence created 200 – 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone (not to mention all the other galaxies), but then for some bizarre reason God only created life on ONE planet! Earth!
  It is truly astonishing that there are still people living on this planet who hold such a limited, flat-Earth view of reality. If there's anything we've learned about Mother Nature, it's that life is everywhere — even in places you wouldn't expect it such as frozen ice or boiling-hot ocean vents.
  If Earth is the only planet in the universe upon which life exists, what would be the point of creating billions of galaxies, each with billions of planets? Are these all just to serve as interesting dots in the sky, all to amuse just one single "chosen" race of intelligent beings known as humankind? Nonsense!
  Interestingly, however, this is probably a common phenomenon among all the races of intelligent beings across our galaxy who look to the sky and think to themselves, "WE must be the only ones here!" There is an anthropocentric tendency among all living creatures, I submit, because each consciousness only experiences the universe from their own individuated point of view. Here on Earth, we joke that teenagers think they are the center of the universe; but the real joke is that much of our adult population quite literally still believes the exact same thing.
  I am glad that the vast majority of NaturalNews readers are intelligent, informed, open-minded and have a "big picture" view of reality. They actually appreciate these discussions of the greater universe, consciousness, and the acknowledgement that Mother Nature has left her mark not merely on this one water planet we call Earth, but almost certainly throughout the entire galaxy wherever life may be sustained (and that's a LOT of places).
  Pieces of Earth right now reside on the Moon, and every molecule of water that now exists on our planet was brought here from some other planet or comet! Our home is, in a very real sense, a collage of elements, metals, liquids and the seeds of life gathered here from (literally) across the galaxy, warmed by the sun, "blessed" into a life-supporting habitat through the miracle of nuclear fusion.
  Even the stuff you are made of — carbon atoms, water, lipids — is composed of elements created in the transmutational explosions of dying stars. "We're made of star stuff," the physicist Carl Sagan once said, and he was right. But what the physicists are still missing, of course, is the element of consciousness across the universe. Because a mass of star stuff alone just equals a pile of rock and metals; but humans clearly have consciousness as an added element in the recipe. (And so do all life forms across the universe, by the way, including animals and plants.)
  In the end, I suppose the belief that Earth is the only planet in the entire universe with intelligent life comes from a self-delusional belief that "We alone are special." Well of course we're special. And so are all the other living, conscious beings that share our universe. We're all special! The fact that this universe even supports life is, itself, a fantastic anomaly. Do you realize that if the laws of physics were tweaked ever so slightly, stars would not be able to use hydrogen as nuclear fuel? No fuel means no suns. No suns equals no habitable planets. Total darkness and death.