If their ain’t life there now, perhaps it will develop by the time we get there? :)

In 100 years I think we Humans will have suffered through one or more Great Declines; due to war, plague or general tomfoolery.

And the human race will resemble a kicked termites nest, hardly interested in the impossible to ascertain unlikelihood of intergalactic sentience.

Give or take a few centuries; but…I just feel it.

I just feel it.

The invaders will do this because they consider whales and dolphins to be superior life forms and humans to be lesser forms of life. The only humans to survive on Earth will be native, tribal peoples who will grow to  worship Cetaceans.

Just remembered – the Invaders were from a gas giant and only recognized their form of life and that like whales et al. as truly intelligent. We’ve found plenty of gas giant exoplanets though…The author’s name is John Varley – well worth reading.

At such time as a future life form resembling what we colloquially know as “humans” can travel the 600M light years.  Pioneer 10, which launched March 3, 1972, is ~14.38 light hours from earth.

Why?  Because, with the provided data, that’s what would lead to something that’s closest to Earth’s mass, leading to it being somewhat inhabitable, if we ever get there.  A rocky planet of that size would have too strong a gravity for us to land on it, and if it was a gas giant (made up of anything other than the composition I described above) then it wouldn’t be as interesting to us.

I’m not making any predictions on whether it will contain life, but I sure hope it does.  That would just make the universe a much more interesting place to be in.

It seems like every time a new exoplanet is discovered, there’s a lot of speculation about potential life. It makes me think that even though there are seven billion of us here, we’re still lonely.

I found this part of your comment extremely poignant.  I think it’s because our world keeps expanding, mentally I mean.  Physically there’s less room but mentally there’s always more.   We now know there are different continents, deep oceans, whole other planets and yet we still haven’t found anything like us to fill that new space.   It’s like living by yourself in a giant house, eventually you wish there was someone else to share it with.

Do the writers of the articles ask the astronomers a lot of what-if questions about the possibility of life on these worlds? It seems like every time a new exoplanet is discovered, there’s a lot of speculation about potential life. It makes me think that even though there are seven billion of us here, we’re still lonely.

As Phil Plait explains on the Bad Astronomy blog, there’s a lot we don’t know about this exoplanet yet…

For starters, what kind of alien seductresses live there? Do they have beehive hairdos and fishnet tights, or are they the more modern variety that have slightly exotic forehead appliqués? What social issues are they dealing with that seem strange at first but are actually suspiciously similar to contemporary events on Earth? I bet they have some really crazy recipes for cooking chicken.