Clanad, with all due respect, I believe your vision is blinkered. I understand that you are probably reluctant to truly objectively consider possibilities that fall outside your beliefs, and outside that which you wish to believe, but all life forms do not survive and evolve in conditions that science once deemed necessary to sustain life. Creatures have been discovered thriving on earth in vastly alien conditions, and therefore we cannot say that we 'understand the basics' or that they are 'universal in nature'. Quite clearly, we don't - and they're not. If that is so, then what is there to preclude life existing elsewhere in the universe in what we would consider the most inhospitable, and even 'impossible', conditions?
As for space travel, an earth-like planet, thought capable of sustaining life, and only 20 light years distant, was recently discovered. 20 light years is indeed a vast - and, at the moment - an impossible distance, but I believe we will, someday, discover a way to conquer such distances - and more - and once we have, such a journey could be easily achieved in one man's lifetime. It may be impossible now, but that doesn't mean it will be impossible in the future. Only a century or so ago we were convinced that a train travelling at more than about 20 miles an hour would mean certain death to its passengers - and air travel was considered an absolute impossibility. 500 years hence (if we haven't blown ourselves to smithereens in the meantime), man will look back at 21st century science and laugh - just as we do when we look back at 19th century science.
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