[solson4]

I think the excitement is that it would give us another data point for what life can possibly be like. So far (AFAIK) the best evidence is that life evolved once on earth, and so everything we see comes from that basic blue print. But does it have to be that way? Would alien life also be carbon based, or something else? Is DNA/RNA (or a close equivalent) a universal feature of life? If not what do they use instead? If so, that's also very interesting. There's just so many questions we can't answer when the sample size is one. I guess my belief (hope?) is that that curiosity would spur further exploration, not kill it.

As for the great filter, yeah, it's a bit scary if we rule out bio-genesis as an option, but that still leaves the single to multi cell jump behind us (and arguably development of human level cooperation/problem solving, but I'm less sold on that one).