[Oblivion437]

Well, if not, I'll use this thread as a base for alien discussion, which does tie into it all. Here's the go of it. There are 200000000000 Stars in the Galaxy, most of them have more than one planet orbiting them, our's has 8 (if you count Pluto), so, we'll try an average of 1000000000000 planets in this Galaxy (all the systems would need 5 planets, not that much, any system could handle it). And use that as the middle ground for the minimum of 1000000000000 galaxies. That's 100000000000000000000000, or, 1 septillion. At a rate of 1 sentient race per 1000000000 planets, that's 1000000000000000 sentient races as an overstatement. This is in the whole universe. The likelyhoods in this rather overstated estimate, while exaggerated, still hold acceptible merits, we can safely assert that somewhere, there has been at least 1 race that has acheived equal intelligence to ours.