Also unrelated but Lawrence Krauss gave this talk (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZiXC8Yh4T0, "A Universe from Nothing") that I enjoyed a lot, but anyway he's talking about quantum mechanics or some type of quasar or something at some point, and he says "The universe huge, and old, and rare things happen all the time." I think that's the best way to look at the universe. Incredibly rare types of stars, I mean incredibly rare events on the order of 1 out of every million stars will experience it, actually happen a lot, enough that we can pretty much find one event every day if we are looking for it, because the universe is SO BIG, and there are SO MANY stars, that these statistically rare events become commonplace because there's just SO MANY of them. It's incomprehensible how many stars are out there. Even if only 1% of the stars we can see have planets around them, and even if 1% of those planets are or will ever be able to support "life" of any kind, there would be billions and billions of these planets out there. Some of these planets will be dying, some will be just coming to life, and some will be in a state like ours currently is. AAAAAA THE UNIVERSE
btw i made a list of some of the cooler parts of that talk with quotes from it, i can post it when I get home if anyone wants to see the "better parts" of that talk (but the whole thing is good, honestly, if you're into that stuff).