Considering our attitude as humans towards animals here on earth, I can't help it but totally agree with Hawkins who proclaims that contact with entities more advanced than us would probably spell our doom. Yet although I believe that in the following decades we will probably discover exotic microbes here on our own solar neighborhood since immense oceans with the ingredients for them to flourish lie beneath many moons of Saturn and Jupiter, contact with an intelligent alien race is still highly improbable for us. Until enough eras pass so we break the scientific boundaries that will allow us to somehow travel faster than light and cover the unimaginable distances that separate our star from others in outer space, we will probably be the advanced creatures which will conquer strange worlds, occupy them and cleanse them from their inhabitants for our own benefit...