Disagree, Carolina Cowboy - science shows us that life springs up anywhere it gets half a chance to do... heck, they have found lifeforms in the deep sea off this coast, in thermal vents with shocking temperatures of hundreds of degrees.They've found it in the deep earth - look at links below.
I would suggest that life is a norm in the universe. I would expect any planet even slightly similar to our own develops, at least, amoeba and bacteria like forms sooner or later. It all depends on the right environment and a mostly friendly solar system, like our own.
A nearly infinite universe, a God of light and life, a universal law of chemistry that makes life not only possible, but likely ... - hmmm - sounds like a formula for life, to me!
I am willing to bet you a home cooked Italian dinner with dessert that in the next 100 years (I won't say my lifetime because I am getting on in years !) we will find primitive lifeforms on the outer moons of Jupiter. I will be terribly surprised if we don't. There have been hints that Mars might have, at least, some primitive life - there were meteorites with fossil like rods looking like bacteria. (look below link)
As for taking our life out there - I plan to - next lifetime I am going to get off this sorry rock and you will find me colonizing an outer planet - if man survives and goes out -I'm reincarnating and going out with him. (I've already told my husband that if he wants me next life, I'll be walking up the stairs of the largest library on Alpha Centauri - look for me, there. )
I will say we will have to go to the stars to find advanced life - as advanced as human, I mean, but even the scientists are saying that it will be a real shock if we are the only sentient life forms in an entire universe of millions, perhaps billions of galaxies... notice, I say galaxies - not stars.
Its not a matter of not finding life - its a matter of how long it will take us to find proof of it.
>>>> finding intelligent (sentient) life might be harder - it doesn't take a genius to see that crawling out of the cave and learning how to manage a highly advanced technological civilization isn't easy - a truly highly advanced, space going race may be a very rare thing, even galaxy wide. I would wish someone would prove this last statement, false, I would love to meet a space going, very friendly space alien!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_venthttp://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_kmens/is_200610/ai_n16924111http://seds.org/~spider/spider/Mars/Marsrock/marsrocks.html
