Very serious stuff Sherlock Holms and his sidekick Watson are out camping on a dark clear moonless night In the middle of the night Watson is suddenly and perhaps even indignantly awakened by the famed detective who says to him Watson look up at the night sky and tell me what you deduce To which Watson rubbing his eyes for a moment responds saying Well let me see now There are stars countless stars in the sky and I can even see the Milky Way galaxy And so if those stars that I can see clearly with the naked eye are themselves only a small fraction of the total number of stars then by logical deduction there may be and likely are countless more that I can not see Now if only a small percentage of those stars were to have planets and of those if only a small portion would to contain solar systems like our own and of all of THOSE stars even if only a small portion were to contain planets similar to ours which have the capability to house life and THEN IF of all THOSE living planets encircling THOSE stars there were some which were able to house intelligent life then I would be forced to conclude by logical inference that there may be countless stars around which circle planets just like ours housing intelligent sentient life forms perhaps not unlike ourselves even right here and now Watson listened through this long winded diatribe with patience and then finally albowed Watson hard and exclaimed You idiot Watson Somebody stole our tent