On Writing : How Many Earth-like Planets Are There? We Don't Know, But Soon. . . by Jim Fisher

I am working on a story based on Mars. Yes, I do often wonder if there is intelligent life out there among the stars.

Isaac Asimov, a mathematician in addition to being a popular science fiction writer, used a very conservative formula to predict that there are probably a million or so intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way alone. He wrote Extraterrestrial Civilizations in 1979 about this work. Is there intelligent life out there? Without a doubt. We just don't know it as an established fact. We are in a relatively young solar system, 4.5 billion years, compared to some that are 11.5 billion years old. We're located between two arms of the galaxy where it's an especially long way to other solar systems, so we're probably not on the radar of other civilizations. However, since the Betty Hill star map was published many years ago in which she drew out a map she saw when she claimed to be kidnapped aboard a UFO, many people have wondered. The stars she drew match an arrangement of stars only visible in the southern hemisphere that was not mapped by science until twenty years after she drew hers. i.e., is that coincidence or is it real? We don't know. You can check out the Hill's star map at wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_and_Betty_Hill#Analyzing_the_star_map. Asimov's book is available at Powell's Books for $19.00. Link is - http://www.powells.com/s?kw=Extraterrestrial+Civilizations+Asimov&class=. Thanks for your comment.