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So, say a couple of trillion stars in the Local Group, some of them that "could" be the proper distance from their star for life to exist - lets say one in a million chance - that's 1,000,000 to 2,000,000,000,000 - or - around 2 million or more planets that could hold life.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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So, say a couple of trillion stars in the Local Group, some of them that "could" be the proper distance from their star for life to exist - lets say one in a million chance - that's 1,000,000 to 2,000,000,000,000 - or - around 2 million or more planets that could hold life.

I think the problem with this calculation is that it assumes that if the conditions necessary for life exist, then life is inevitable. As we don't know of any natural processes capable of producing life, we can't say what the 'chances' are of life existing elsewhere. In short, it is impossible to extrapolate from a population of one, especially when one doesn't know how that one came to be to begin with. Big numbers don’t help here.