well actually I don't really thikn yo guys have all don eyour reading. I have read some books on this kind of stuff, and I am kindof impoartial on the subject, howerver, I definitlely think it's possible. I'm not really sure what it was called, I think it was the DRAKE t heory or something, but there was a theory that ended up syaing something similar to the fact that 4000 intelligent races were existant in one galaxy, and it was a complicated mathematical equation. There was another theory that said that it woudl take 60 million years to populate an entire galaxy if using the tecnique of huge ships that have genrations of life on them before reaching new solar systems and then populating it and proceeding.
The thing is, sure space is massive, but so is time, think about how long the earth has been around for, a few billion years, and then it would only take 60 million years (which is rediculously long considering what we've done in the last 10-20 years)to scout out the whole galaxy, it seems pretty possible that this stuff could be real.
-Michael Lifshitz-