Of course there's life out there. It would be foolish not to accept that. Imperical evidence is all that we need at this point.

We may very well be alone by the sheer distances involved with inter-solar or inter-steller travel, but just because you can't take a jon boat across the atlantic doesn't mean that there isn't life on a distant shore.

I wouldn't even limit your thoughts to those systems where you're looking at only Sol-like stars. I've always considered our gas giants as brown dwarfs themselves, not a scientists so I assume I'm allowed some latitude, as they don't have the mass required for fusion but still put out copious amounts of energy on their own.

As far as Europa is concerned... man, I've been waiting for us to get there for the last thirty years. I believe it was the voyager missions of the '70s that eluded to a briny watery subsurface ocean. They were able to come to that by their van allen belt readings right? I'm going off old information so probably a little off.

Even when we sent the probe to Triton where they have rivers and oceans of liquid helium (?) I was chewing on my nails as to whether they would find microbial life or a walmart around the area where the probe touched down.

In fact they've found subsurface ice on Mars with their latest probe. That's cool because there may be some organizism living deeper, out of reach of the sun's radiation, that could be thriving.

I think we have to put boots on the ground to really get a good idea. And long term, not just long enough to swing a golf club.

BTW, Space.com is an awesome site. I've been going there since the invention of internet. Well, maybe not from the beginning, but definitely for the last ten years.