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Today I was watching a TED talk video, in which the speaker spoke about how it is truly rare to find an advanced species like us in the universe, capable of contemplating their place in the cosmos. 

He theorised that the chances of finding another such civilisation in the universe would be around one in a trillion galaxies. He spoke about the various barriers that any life form would need to overcome to reach that status, concluding that he believes we are alone in the universe. 

I have nothing against the speaker, but I think that this idea is a ridiculously absurd one. There are many things wrong about how he came to the conclusion and the conclusion itself. 

There are probably more than a trillion galaxies out there with hundreds of billions of stars in them. That would make the number of planets so high that we can't even imagine it meaningfully. It seems statistically impossible that we are alone in such a vast universe!

# Thinking Outside The Box
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In the search for intelligent extraterrestrial, scientists are often fixated on finding water, as based on our current understanding, life requires water. They also look for a planet that is at a favourable distance from its sun.

What I have always believed is that, maybe in other places in the universe, life started out with totally different parameters than Earth's and doesn't require the same ingredients to exist that we do. Granted, it would make the search for life easier if we looked for life similar to ours, as we already understand it.

But that doesn't mean other forms of life simply cannot exist out there. Maybe there are intelligent beings that are made of uranium and require cosmic rays to survive! 

Also, there might be dimensions to their life that our monkey brains simply cannot understand. Do you expect your dog to even remotely understand the concept of wi-fi? No, right? Then is it possible that we are simply not intelligent enough to understand other forms or dimensions of life that can exist in the universe? 

# Small Samples Cannot Predict Larger Reality
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![2.jpg](https://ipfs.busy.org/ipfs/QmPMrTSjCgSdG6JczXT2DAE7ELeEVkH2RQziX3tQgYjFMG)

In the video, the speaker said that if there really were intelligent beings out there, isn't it possible that we would have had _some_ signs of them by now? Our space activities have been going on for more than 60 years now, so it's natural to think that way. 

But consider the size of the universe and the 'actual looking' that we have done. We haven't even explored Mars completely and there are ongoing missions to determine if there are microbial life forms underneath its surface. Let alone other planets and their moons in the solar system. 

It's like taking a cup of water out of the ocean and concluding that there is no fish in the ocean because we would see at least _some_ sign of it in the cup. Our space exploration till now has been millions of times less significant than that cup even!

There can be thousands of reasons that we might not have heard from them. Maybe they don't consider us intelligent enough, or maybe we just don't have the technology to detect them, or maybe they are already here and observing us, and we just can't tell!!