ha,,loving this thread,,,
well aliens or not the whole world would unify,either with or with out absolute chaos.....
I see it like South Park dose,,there are ailens but we will be tested as a race by the aliens to see if we a 'worthy' of joining a galatic fedartion,,not to sound all geeky.
When you really think about it,,all the stars,,all the galaxies,,which is alot(there are more stars in the universe than atoms in the solar system,,,) there has to be another place where 'life' could of or still does or will in the future. When I say life I dont mean self aware life I mean like animals on another planet.
The problem with search for life is time. Meaning that there is only so long in the universe that life can exist for,,the stella age,,the age of the stars,,beacuse one day they will be gone,,everything will be,,but also remeber that inter-stella space is so vast that getting to one place may take so long that there may of been life but its now gone...also remeber that we have only travelled 1/10th of the distance around the milky way(thats since the dawn of homosapiens)
so that the problem I see in the search for life,,,we just dont have enough time......