First off, there are so many variables it's almost funny. You're talking theories of evolution, religious beliefs, and some conspiracy theories (with aliens!) but scientifically this is what I've found. Yes, theoretically, if the higher forms of life (I'm reading any complex living organism here) where to perish or conditions shifted so drastically that we (all the fuzzy animals) could no longer survive, yes, life could begin anew. Our wonderfully bright star, the Sun, is dated to be about 5 billion years old and it's star class (yellow dwarf) is averaged to exist for a good 10 billion years. Our Earth is dated around 4 billion and some odd years, the race from gooey sludge to complex fuzzy animals took about 3 billion years, and last but not least, the humans managed to squeeze in at about 200 thousand years ago to present day, quite quickly on the grand scale. So, all in all, if something horrible happens (knock on wood) then yes, life will find a way to start anew; however, no ego trips, there most likely not be another round of humans exactly like us. If you study anthropology or archeology you might know that it was luck that got our foot in the door at all. Let's hope it'll keep us there. Hope this helps and wasn't to long. Pages Used: The Sun http://www.faqs.org/faqs/astronomy/faq/part5/section-7.html The Earth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Earth The Humans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_humanity

No, because nothing ever evolved in the first place.

well, supposedly it happenned once in the universe... the probability has been calculated at 10^450 in order to produce a single cell of life, minimum...but all atoms of all matter in all the universe with all the atoms moving a billion times a second for a billion billion years, for safe measure, comes out to 10^170. which means 10^450 required minus - 10^170 actual is a lot less than life by 10^280 power. youre gonna be waiting around by yourself a long, long time. carl sagan calculated 10^2,000,000,000 ( that 2 billion zeros) for a single cell of life to be formed