re: So what is NASA announcing Wednesday?

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I think life is much more rare in the cosmos than what I thought back then but I still firmly believe that we are not alone.

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I think life is ubiquitous wherever conditions exist that favor its evolution. It really isn't as mysterious as most people think. Here's a great link that shows life as a catalyst for metabolism, for example.

It's the development of consciousness and sentience that is mysterious. Simple life evolved as merely a complex chemical chain reaction on earth. It kept getting increasingly complex and has culminated in several conscious species, the most intelligent of which are humans.

In the link that I'm sharing, Eric Smith contends that life is inevitable under optimum conditions. I agree with his assessment.

However, intelligence may be much more rare. In fact, there's no reason at this point to think that we're not the only sentient species in our galaxy, maybe even in the Universe.