Life could be abundant in the Universe

I think there is probably life elsewhere in then universe. I also think that there is no plan for life. It simply exists. What plans we do have are the ones we invent for ourselves. It is quite apparent to me that the universe ticks away without really caring if we exist or not. Past mass extinctions are a good example of this. How do we know this? The only way you can come up with such a figure is if we are able to perceive, through whatever means, the entire 100%. You forget that we have made tools that allow us to measure the entire EM spectrum, as one example. The limitations of the senses we are born with is not a limitation of science. No one disagrees that it may be difficult to discover life on other planets if it differs greatly from the life we are used to. For example, there could be life on Titan that is based on liquid methane. This life could move so slowly that it would be difficult for us to detect, but not impossible. Also, there are some that are hoping to find life on Europa.With that said, there is one fundamental concept that should help us find life: the existence of high energy molecules where they should not be. For example, the oxygen in our atmosphere. If there were no life it would not be there. If all life vanished from the face of the Earth it would only take a few thousand years for the oxygen to combine with rocks and other elements. What you look for when looking for life is its metabolic waste, such as oxygen. No metabolism, no life. I really don't see a fundamental hurdle that would stop us from finding life using this very basic tool.

I am talking about the disappearance of 95% of species, such as the P/T extinction event. Where did I say that they did? The mass extinctions are just that, mass extinctions. Life comes back "more evolved" because evolution continues in the species that survived the mass extinctions. Actually, all we would need to do is compare the DNA of the caterpillar and butterfly. We would find that the two populations are one in the same. We would then study the caterpillar in the lab and witness the transformation of the caterpillar into a butterfly. How so? Are you saying that modern species have identical genomes as species from the Cambrian just as caterpillars and butterflies have identical DNA? No, it isn't. With development the changes occur over a lifetime. In the fossil record, changes occur over millions of years over thousands and thousands of generations. They are very different. Say what? Do you really think that the Earth's mass has changed that much over the last 65 million years? What are you smoking? Does the presence of life on a planet somehow cause a force field to develop around a planet that prevents meteors from crashing into it? Is there some force field that protects planets with life from massive gamma ray bursts? Please explain to us how nature stops disasters from happening on planets that have life.

This does not pose a problem for detecting life. We could use plankton as an example. We can not see these lifeforms with the naked eye. They are the diffuse dots you speak, and dots that are too small to see with the naked eye. However, we can still detect that there is life by the oxygen that they produce and the carbohydrates found in layers on the bottom of the ocean. Again, it is metabolism that gives life away. It is the chemistry of life that makes it detectable.So we have organisms we can't see with the naked eye who produce a gas that does not absorb in the light frequencies that our eyes detect, YET WE ARE STILL ABLE TO DETECT THIS LIFE.