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There was a show about this subject on the Discovery Channel where they actually did the mathematical calculations on this taking into account all the factors needed to create life on a planet.
The number of probable planets with life just in our Milky Way Galaxy came out to about 10,000 on the high side and 2,500 on the low side.
However you have to define what life means compared to the life we think of here.
My estimate would be about 100 to 500 intelligent civilizations in our galaxy.
The Milky Way has a diameter of 100,000 light years and holds about 400 Billion stars.
So that would calculate out to about 1 intelligent civilization for every 4 Billion stars in our galaxy.
Next calculate this factor for the entire Universe which has an estimated 250 Billion Galaxies.
But lets go ultra conservative and cut the factor of 100 per galaxy to only 1 per galaxy. You'd have 250 Billion civilizations potentially which sounds like a lot, but considering the size of the universe its really not.
It would be virtually impossible statistically based on the commonality of the same elements throughout the Universe to not have life elsewhere.
Even if you blew down the stats to 1 civilization for every billion galaxies you'd still have at least 250 out there.
That is 250 out of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 solar systems.
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