Is there likely to be any other intelligent life in the galaxy or even universe?

Yes, the speed of light can be exceeded but only in nature. As far as we currently know it will never be possible for beings to create anything that moves faster than the speed of light.

For time travel there are scientists theorising that travel into the future is possible but even these few folk regard travelling into the past as more than difficult.

Of course a relatively prosaic method of travelling into the future would be to get your body frozen with the appropriate frozen fluids and before doing so leave instructions for either the specific time or circumstances of your thawing out, i.e. when a cure has been found for cancer. There are stories of folk who were terminally ill who have done this but as yet there is no news of anyone having been revived.

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Originally Posted by griff

So, if it has an edge, it must be contained within something which is big enough for the expansion. Is that container infinite?

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That is what I have thought, if you could stand at the edge of the universe and look outwards what would you see?

Astrophysicists say that the universe has an edge and is expanding, so your point is well made. We define the universe as 'everything' so how can it expand and what can it expand into? Personally, I have a problem with 'infinite' in this context. 'So incredibly large that for all practical purposes we may regard it as infinite' is as far as I can go on this.

This is such a profound question that I suspect that it could only be answered by the likes of Steve Pattison.

Where, in our Solar System and not on Earth, are we first going to discover evidence of either current simple (microbial) life or life that has existed in the past?

I reckon that beneath the icy surfaces of both Europa (a moon of Jupiter) and Enceladus (a moon of Saturn) there is a lot of water in liquid form. In that water there could be microbes. I am backing Europa.

Some folk think that a very long time ago Mars could have had intelligent life. But if it ever did have such life it would have been so long ago that there is now absolutely no sign of it having existed.