This evening held the tightest configuration of the five naked-eye planets possible to spot for a, by our standards, good deal of time. That, in addition to Mercury fading rapidly with Saturn about to follow, and the triangle dissolved, spells time to look for something else.

It's been an interesting week though. Observing planets and concentrating on the nighttime sky always reminds me of, among other things, the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe.
I think that if I were to be religious as of today, this is what I'd believe in. It is what I think about when I (like a lot of people before me, no doubt) feel a need for some kind of outerwordly salvation.
So sometimes when I'm there, with planets seemingly at my fingertips, these sensations get so strong that I feel convinced we are not alone. Suddenly each new day seems to sport a shimmer of excitement - it might be the day when I'll find out, and everything I was planning to do will be toppled over like a row of dominoes. Not very likely, I know. But perhaps.

Consider that we live in a universe, the observable parts of which hold more galaxies than there are humans on Earth. A lot more, in fact - with some hundred billion (10¹¹) galaxies, there would be somewhere between 15 and 20 galaxies for each of us to explore, were we to check on all of them. If circumstances were such that I had the possibility and the time to do this thoroughly, I would indeed expect to find life.

Well, you've heard that before, I'm sure. Opinions based on the sheer number of galaxies, stars and planets are common, as is the usual counter-opinion: if there's so much life brimming everywhere, well...where is it?
I don't know. I wish I did. But while feeling a sting of helplessness at being so powerless to personally explore my cosmic surroundings - I would want to be the Silver Surfer, to be capable of interstellar travel (not to mention channeling of cosmic energy) - I also find comfort in the size of the universe, and to a degree, I find my answers there.
Even the biggest known single components of the universe, the galaxies, and the clusters in which they tend to gather, are dwarfed by the immense amount of space around and between them. It's a lot of distance to cross.

In the third century B.C. in ancient Egypt lived a Greek named Erathostenes. He worked as director of the great library of Alexandria, and, among other things, he was the first known human to accurately measure the size of a planet - our own. Through comparing shadows cast by vertical sticks in different cities (read about it here), he calculated the Earth to be a sphere with a circumference of - pretty much on the spot - 40,000 kilometers.

In a world centered around the Mediterranean, a discovery such as this was quick to make explorers sail west in order to circumnavigate the Earth and reach India. But open-sea navigation at this time was still poor, and the Atlantic Ocean too vast.
Around 200 years later, a semi-famous geographer and map-maker called Strabo was born in Amasya (a city in what is today known as Turkey, but back then belonged to the Roman Empire). Strabo visited and wrote about a whole lot of countries, as far east as India and as far south as Ethiopia.

On the problem of crossing the sea, Strabo wrote, relating to research done by Erathostenes, that if the extent of the Atlantic Ocean was not an obstacle, it would be possible to pass by sea to India - unless, of course, there was another land mass in the way. The approximated eastward extension of Asia and the measuring of the Earth done by Erathostenes seemed to permit this.
If so, he reasoned, the eventual inhabitants of that land mass would not be the same kind of men that existed around the Mediterranean, and so, it would have to be regarded as a new world.
And roughly 1400 years later, Columbus sailed across the ocean and proved it so.

Today, it seems, we're at a somewhat similar point in history. Distant planets around other stars are our new worlds, and the light-years are our Atlantic Ocean.
We suspect there might be life out there, but we have no way of covering the distances. Like Strabo pointed out though, any life we encounter on the other side will almost certainly be different from that which we know.

Perhaps a breakthrough lies 1400 years in the future here too. It's unlikely, but even with a bright forecast, human lives are short. We can't afford too much waiting.
So I watch the planets when I can, and I feel good about my thoughts.