[deadbabe]

I think at best we will find very distant evidence of advanced alien life: Inspiring, but so far away and unreachable that we’ll never meet or communicate with them in any way.

Don’t know what’s worse: wondering if there is alien life or knowing there is alien life in a distant system somewhere but having no further information that can be learned about them.

[jandrese]

Or the implication that FTL and interstellar travel is either outright impossible or completely impractical. We are trapped alone in our otherwise unexceptional solar system forever, or until there is a catastrophe so large as to kill us off as a species.

[micromacrofoot]

we can all but assume it does exist, the odds support it heavily... it would be astounding if we were the only ones

but still the distances of both time and space are insurmountable

[wileydragonfly]

What odds? We have an n of 1.

[td2]

The odds of water, being just at the right distance to the sun, etc i guess

Sure we dont know the chance of life emerging, the symbiotic relationship that provides power for cells, chance of multicells etc.

[micromacrofoot]

true! we can't measure exactly... but we're talking trillions of possibilities, at that volume something happening by mistake only once is unlikely