>I seem to recall a book called "Rare Earth" that talks about this written by a NASA scientist named Brownlee and came out about 2000 or so. Fascinating.
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>There's also the Fermi Paradox. If life evolves under the right circumstances, even if it's a billion-to-one shot, then where the heck is everyone?
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>Things get really complicated if you involve far-future beings ... the energy death of the universe would force survivors to, essentially, rethink the same thoughts....could we be a sim? Perhaps. But that begs off the original question because those gazillion year old folks would have had to have a start somewhere.
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>This is going to sound dumb, but it really bothers me that I'll pass away some day without ever knowing the answers to these questions.

No, me too, John. Bugs me that I'll never even get into space. It's partly because of this that I took up scuba diving.