I think this is pretty amazing stuff. If life can sustain itself on a hell-world like Venus, and right in our stellar backyard, than it's likely to exist in other unlikely or extreme places.
Whilst not wrong, it's typically not quite the
life that the majority of us are hoping to be found.
Not that I was ever expecting scientists to find sentient or intelligent life in our solar system, but that's gotta' be the endgame. Finding bacteria and microbes about the galaxy just isn't going to cut it.
You do have to wonder though what is, has been, or could be out there. When you truly comprehend just how vast the universe is, let alone just our little galaxy, it's just got to be thriving with sentient life, be that grounded to their own planets, or engaged in intergalactic war etc; one would like to think not every alien species of the intelligent type is going to be as warmongering or antagonistic as humanity likely will be for the next couple of centuries and beyond.
Then again, when you consider how ... fortune(?) we are as a species, and how we've
become, maybe we're just the lucky ones and the galaxy and/or universe is quite literally ours for the taking? Heh. I'm quite certain of the former however - life is out there, we just haven't found it yet, but has life found us?
