All those years spent reading science fiction novels about life on other planets, all that nerdy "Star Trek" watching, all those movies -- wasted:
Advanced ground and space-based telescopes are discovering new planets around other stars almost daily, but an environmental scientist from England believes that even if some of those planets turn out to be Earthlike, the odds are very low they'll have intelligent inhabitants.
He could be wrong, of course. As a critic says in the piece, 'Watson argues that intelligent life will be dismayingly rare: There is no way to prove that is true. On the other hand, if the converse is the case — if the galaxy is home to many intelligences — that is amenable to proof. We should do the experiment." I hope he is wrong. It would just be too sad to be alone in the universe.
