well the idea of intelligence and consciousness in the universe is a huge area of study and wonder. Nothing can be discarded in that area until we have a been understanding. When you think about it the idea of sentient beings in the universe is weird. It does make sense or reason. It is in fact why some physics hold the idea of a god.

In fact life seems to counteract the laws of entropy, though new research suggested that life is the most efficient form of entropy, so as to get to a state of lowest entropy quicker there has to be strange cases of increasing entropy (life). There is also the Anthropic principle which has interesting conclusions on life.