Within our narrow (but, in all likelihood, accurate) idea of what kind of planets can sustain life and using our verdant technology, we have already discovered a few star systems with one or two planets that fulfill our criteria. The bad news is that there is a rather long stretch between being able to sustain life and being able to sustain advanced, intelligent civilizations, and there is little reason to believe that one of the rather few habitable planets that we’ve identified actually harbors intelligent life. The good news is that we’ve explored such an insignificant corner of the universe for life that the mere fact that there are habitable planets within earshot means the probability of there being life somewhere out there is excitingly high.
Again, the bad news is that physical constraints prevent us from getting to such faraway places within any reasonable time-frame. Faster-than-light travel is not as yet understood to be possible, unless we are able to meddle with the very fabric of space-time. Even then, if the Big Rip hypothesis turns out to be true, every second that passes makes intergalactic travel more and more implausible.
But supposing we are one day able to distort space-time to travel to faraway places, where should we look? It’s not just planets at a certain distance from their stars that we should look for. The size of the star, its luminosity, its dark spots, the way the planet revolves around the star (e.g., tidal lock), the atmospheric components of the planet, the planet’s rotation and tilt, the size and distance of other planets orbiting around the same star (which could stabilize the habitable planet’s orbit and shield it from asteroids and comets), and even the shape and activity of the galaxy are all important factors to consider.
Regardless, we’re not flying out in search of aliens any time soon. If we are to see them in our lifetimes, it’s probably because they will come to us – not the other way around – but I don’t think we’ll see that very soon, either. Regardless, extraterrestrial life is a captivating subject, and I do hope that one day humans will greet creatures of another planet and establish a mutually beneficial relationship. The end of a life-sustaining universe is not an encouraging scenario to contemplate, so it would be nice to know we’re not the only ones concerned with preserving life forever. --
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