I keep hearing two issues tied together and they shouldn't be. The first, is there life elsewhere in the Universe? I say if the odds are quad-trillions to 1 that life could exist, then it probably does concidaring the size of the Universe.
The second, less important issue could they find their way here, this one of course is very doubtful UNLESS of course you forget everything we THINK we know about space travel limitations. We have this theory (and it is nothing more than that) that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light - this limits radio communication and even the old question "If you are traveling faster than light speed, will your headlights work?"
Saying light is the ULTIMATE SPEED in which things can travel may be premature and restricted to the only a few decades of radio-space science. We are mear infants in leaving our own planet, let known know what is possible if an intelligent race is given thousands of generations to find alteritive means of travel.
I still say the ULTIMATE means of travel is through conscious energy, not spaceships or worm holes. I could talk Out of Body Experiences all day - here is the link if you haven't read some of my thoughts
http://www.beemaster.com/site/obe/obe.html will fill you in.
Butif conscious thought is able to travel both time and space, imagine if you could find a way to attach a space craft to it and INSTANTLY be anywhere you wanted to be. Also imagine that you have computers and software able to DEEP SPACE predict the likeliness of life sustaining planets, even gauge the age and development of the planet. Think of it as a really big Google Earth.
You need to think out of the box, saying we know things "are only relative" to our own experiences and theories. What works here doesn't mean a billion light years away the same rules apply, I live in New Jersey and don't see Spanish Moss hanging from my trees, but go south and it's everywhere. Like the three blind men felling an elephant, each has their own prospective. I just think mankind really limits what they can do by their own preconceived concepts of how things will react.
So I say: life elsewhere, very likely but life is anything from micro-organisms to conscious energy beings who no longer need bodies to exist. Sure call it sci-fi, but go back 100 years and explain the common items like cellphones, TVs airplanes and a million other daily used items and people would think you a witch or a god.
Its just so sad that if life exists elsewhere, lots of things would have to align for them to find us and equally magical things needed to get to us. But that does not mean it is impossible, it is only impossible to us, as long as we believe traveling at light speed is as fast as we can go. I'd love to be here a hundred years from now when people talk about how primative we were, likely we'll look like cave men to their technology.