Frack off with that boosting hopes for life. Seriously.

I wonder if they have oil lobbyists

So people still hope for aliens?

What do we get, if they exist?

Either they're like us, and they'll want to destroy us.

Either they are not like us, and they'll want to destroy us.

You can be interested in whether something exists without there being anything we "get" either way.

This is so stupid.

It should be OBVIOUS to anyone paying attention to space and biology over the last two decades that the "habitable zone" is just being a fool to the anthropic principle.

For two blatantly obvious reasons:

1. We DO NOT KNOW what forms "life" can take, so assuming they must need our type of environment is ... stupid. See every extremophile species on this planet, let alone anything developing in worse environments.
2. It has been proven time and time again that many different scenarios can produce habitable conditions, or the opposite: Moons orbiting gas giants can absolutely get enough heat and tectonic action, amongst many other specific scenarios. On the opposite end, some entire types of stars turn out to not have ANY "habitable zone" in reality, such as red dwarfs having way too powerful of solar flares.

Such articles are nothing but ignorance manifest.

On the first point... I don't know if the assumption is that life can only thrive in our type of environment, so much as that our type of environment is the only one that we know can support life so, as a starting point, it's the best type to look for.

Maybe not, but that's my interpretation.

Hello Ryland.

That's the consensus. We can't search everywhere all at once, we have to start somewhere.

Is there any particular reason why they'd want to destroy us? What would THEY get out of that?

Either they are like us and they'll want to destroy us for not really any real reason, just like humanity has been doing for its whole existence.

Either they're not like us, and they'd be shocked at how crazy humans are, and would want to destroy this threat of uncontrollable destruction that humanity represents.

Some aliens just want to watch the world burn.

A good summary of all we know is in the freely available Astrobiology Primer (currently v3), Chapter 7 is about exotic forms of life and why we look at the bands we do. You'll find they comfortably cover all earth conditions including extremophiles, and they do consider exoplanet moons, although those are harder to observe.

It also has several chapters about why we look to earth like life, including that it's the entirety of life observed, the only we could currently discover, etc.

Have a read, it's quite interesting. It goes particularly well with touching some grass.

Or, having managed to become truly space faring and capable of even reaching us, they have learnt to work together and are above such very human nonsense. Do you want to destroy your neighbour just because they exist?

So do some men, I hear. I'm not a man and I don't want to watch the world burn and I don't think most other humans do either. If you assume that all aliens must be destructive fucking idiots, without even knowing whether they exist, let alone the first thing about what they're like, I think that says more about you and your view of humanity that will prevent us from ever leaving this planet.

"We are desperately hoping to find a better class of people out there" according to an unidentified source.

It's 48 light years away, so at least you won't have to worry about hearing a response in your lifetime.

You misunderstand what I said. Nobody said life NEEDS our style of life...

BUT the "habitable zone" LITERALLY ASSUMES THAT. That's the ENTIRE POINT of the "habitable zone".

It's NOTHING but an assumption that life must imitate us.

lol good job absolutely failing to understand the lessons such materials teach...

We ARE NOT the only pattern for life. Period. Ever. Your ignorance is laughable to the universe.

Yet nobody with any clue what's going on is actually ruling out other sources... You are choosing to believe fiction authors over scientists. Sad.

Well yeah, why would anyone "rule out" anything? That's not what I said. It's prioritising some places over others because there needs to be some kind of priority so we can decide where to look first.

So tell me what we should look for and why, preferably with an estimation of how likely it is that we'll find something.

alien: "what's the difference between this bag and that bag?" --he gestures to the gucci bag on my shoulder and the bag on my photographers shoulder, probably from wal-mart; i wouldn't know.

human: "mine is a gucci."

alien: "what about his?"

human: "it's cheap" --her eyes can't hide the disdain toward his bag.

alien: "does yours hold more items? did you finally solve the infinite pouch paradox?'

human: "stop being weird... it's a better brand, a luxurious brand.."

alien: "what's luxury?"

human: "let me consult with chatgtp, give me a second.'

alien: 'but does it hold more items????'

human: "no, it holds the same amount of items."

the alien flies away.