There is surely life elsewhere in the universe — even intelligent life on the same level as us. But if there are any alien species out there in the universe, which there surely are, and they’ve been intelligent long enough to even be on the same technological level as us — who’s to say their golden record or voyager II wasn’t shot in a completely different direction? What if their telescopes are just pointing in a direction that’ll never have our solar system come into view? What if their own galaxy orbits the center of the universe at such an angle that we’re like two passing ships in the night?

What if they’re so “deep” into the universe that their radio signals or whatever just never make it to us?

We’ll never know and honestly I think we’re destined as a species to always be “alone” in that sense. The universe is too vast — too impregnable for it to even be feasible for us to make contact with some other species out there. They definitely are out there - and hopefully there is some sort of universal consciousness that we all filter back into after death.