Alex McColgan

Probably not.

So, let's keep an open mind, but roughly let's define life as those things that seek out resources, grow and reproduce.

Whether those creatures are predominantly water, like us, or whether they are made from some other elements, or even pure energy, it doesn't really matter.

All we care about is the likelihood of them reaching a level of intelligence where they might be able to talk to us.

To get to that level, there are still a number of things that need to go right.

To begin with, they would most likely need a star to orbit.

As near as we can tell, life cannot exist without energy.

They would need a planet that suited them.

They would need to compete with other organisms for limited resources, thus encouraging them to adapt and progress.

In time, they would need to develop problem-solving skills and intelligence as a way of gaining those resources and out-competing their rivals.

Their civilization would then have to survive without accidentally becoming extinct due to a freak meteor strike, or earthquake, or global freezing.

They would also have to not destroy themselves.

They would have to invest in technology, and would have to develop a level of technology that allowed them to reach out across the universe.

They'd also have to have a desire to talk to any potential neighbours, as opposed to being intensely isolationist.

and finally would have to broadcast a signal out to us for long enough that we would be able to spot them.

All of this is by no means certain.

However, as was pointed out by astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake in the first SETI meetings in 1961, all of this could be used to calculate the probability of us finding alien life.

He laid all this out in his famous Drake equation,

This may look a little complicated, but it's based on a very clever and logical idea.

Using the same logic that says you can figure out how many students are in a school by calculating how many students were inducted into the school at the start of each year, and then multiplying that by the number of years students studied for,