People believe that life probably exists elsewhere because we know life is possible. In my opinion, assuming that we are entirely unique among untold trillions of planets seems more like “magical thinking” than investigating the possibility of extant life elsewhere.
OK, lets say for sake of argument that we ARE completely unique, the sole example of life in an unimaginably vast universe. Well, that would be pretty a pretty fascinating thing to learn too. That’s the great thing about scientific investigation—you end up with more knowledge than you started with no matter what the result of the investigation turns out to be.
That’s true. For one thing, observing the skies from afar requires a few orders of magnitude fewer resources.[quote=“Mongrove, post:32, topic:14456”]
Ancient people should have explored the horizon and sea, because the horizon and sea exist. There’s stuff there.
[/quote]
Other PLANETS exist. We’re in the process of trying to learn what’s there.
Ancient people DID dedicate resources to observing space with the tools available to them at the time. That’s how humanity charted the stars and the motions of the planets. We’re simply observing an aspect of space that was unavailable to our ancestors.
