To address the OP, those are some pretty amazing images, and it truly does put one in their place. No matter how self-important you are, remember you are a tiny speck on a slightly larger speck floating around in an infinite and ever-expanding universe. So existentialist. You exist somewhere in all of this
On to the treadjacks
#1 - other life: it is very probable that there is life in other places of the universe. It may not be life we can relate to, or understand, or even have the ability to classify as life at this point, but that does not mean it doesn't exist. hell we are still discovering things on our own planet, let's not jump to conclusions and assume we are the only things around. Only a few hundred years ago, we were convinced that we were actually at the center of the universe.
Which segues into TJ2, the discovering other alloys bit. We definitely aren't even close to discovering all there is to find on our own planet. Science has a way of being pompous and overconfident, but the fact is that many hard and fast facts have been discredited as new technologies and discoveries are made. I'm especially interested in what we'll find out using the supercollider.
I would be very interested to hear people's thoughts on TJ1 - are we alone in the universe? I think it does relate somewhat to the OP as well...