Enrico Fermi Was a Dick.

In 1950, Enrico Fermi sat down for lunch with several of his colleagues and asked "Where is everybody?" His lunchmates were understandably confused, as they were present in the room with him. But Fermi had not gone blind and deaf simultaneously, and he was not asking about the whereabouts of his friends. He was asking where the aliens were (the space kind, not the Mexico kind).
He reasoned that, if there is other intelligent life in the galaxy, we should have managed to find some evidence of it by now. Using the same reasoning he disproved the existence of Yetis, Bigfoot, God, Faeries and all sorts of other mythical creatures (including dragons). In short, Fermi managed, in the space of a few sentences, to crush the childhood fantasies of every single person who has ever watched science fiction on television. Yes, Enrico Fermi was a dick, and afterward found himself eating alone at lunchtime.
But, while I like to believe that our galaxy is teeming with life, sometimes I am haunted by Fermi's idea. Impressive because he is dead, and I'm not. But I can't help but wonder. What if, by some cosmic twist of fate, ours is the only planet that fosters life? A lone oasis in a barren desert of a universe. What if when we look up at the stars there is nobody and nothing peering at us from a distant world?
Even with all the billions of humans, potentially trillions if we ever leave our backwater solar system, that would be a very lonely existence.

And, because this was kind of depressing, here's a puppy: