A Star Is Born.

When our star was born some 5 billion years ago it left behind an accretion disk of dust and gases.

Everything that is in our own solar system, all the planets, asteroids, comets, and Ort cloud was made up of these dusts and gases.
Our own planet, Earth, was one of the planets made up of all this debris. In about half a billion years our Solar System had calmed down and the very first signs of life appeared on our planet. Between 4.1 billion and 3.5 billion years ago we have fossil data showing microbes inhabited our planet. From these tiny microbes all living things came into being. There was an estimated five billion life forms that have made Earth their home.
99% of these life forms are now extinct.

Today we estimate there are about 10 million to 14 million different species of life on our planet. We have named only about 1.9 million of these.

Our Neighborhood

Our sun lives in the Milky Way Galaxy. It is one of the older galaxies in the universe, being about 13.2 billion years old.
It contains an estimated 100 to 400 billion stars. It is a spiral shaped galaxy and our sun lives in one of the spiral arms known as the Orion Arm. We are about 26,000 light years from the galactic center.

Let's Do Some Math

Knowing that there are between 100 and 400 billion stars in our galaxy let's take the average and say that there are 200 billion stars.
Now we know our solar system has nine major planets and many other smaller bodies that orbit our star. We also know that life exists on one of these planets, Earth.
We also know that all stars have an accretion disk at birth so most of these stars will have planetary systems. Some may be much older than us and some will be much younger and still forming their planets.
Let's cut the figure in half. So out of the 200 billion stars we are left with 100 billion stars that have planets and to be pessimistic let's halve that number again and say 50 billion stars have planets. Not all planets fall within the "life zone" also termed the "goldilocks zone" where life, as we know it, can take root. So let's cut that number in half again and that would leave 25 billion stars that could possibly contain life. And this is just in our galaxy alone. The universe has billions and billions of galaxies.
Now let's just say that civilized life forms exist on only 2% of these planets. That is about 50 million civilizations in our galaxy that may be as advanced as us, less advanced than us, or more advanced than us. Let's divide that number by 3 and we still have 166,666,666 civilizations more advanced than us.
For the sake of this article, let us say that 1% of these highly advanced civilizations have the ability to cross interstellar space. That would leave 1,666,666 civilizations that can travel between the stars.
Now, I know this is all hypothetical and many of these civilizations may have destroyed themselves or been destroyed by some other means, however, it is my belief that our galaxy is teeming with life. More life than our small brains can imagine.

So Where Are They All?

Looking back through our own history, which is pretty vague, alien life may have visited us in the far distant past. They may have even been influential in our evolution. From our own legends and myths, which I believe have a grain of truth, we have been visited before and are probably still being visited today.

Paul Hellyer, a politician from Canada, became our Minister of Defense in 1963. He has since come out with books and videos about aliens on our planet. He is not the only one. He is an educated man and someone I respect. He has stated that there are 80 different alien species on Earth at this time. Some are here to help us, some to protect us and some that mean us harm. You can find information about him on YouTube

I hope you have found this interesting and thought provoking!
Please leave your comments below.
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