As Perseverance is seeking signs of (ancient) microbial life, how would you all react if such a discovery actually came through? I'm personally a bit of a doubter that life will ever be found elsewhere, so such a finding would floor me. In my mind, if we find signs of life beyond Earth, we're doomed. That's when all the implications of the Fermi paradox become real to me - it might actually be the scariest news I could hear up there with imminent nuclear war.
Don't worry, if there's some kind of galactic order, it's almost guaranteed that they'd want nothing to do with mankind at this point in our evolution.
I hope so! My larger concern would be a single, super predator race. Ignoring human ideals and morals, surely the safest thing for a race that’s vastly ahead in technology wise when finding a younger race to do would be to just wipe them out, no? Why would they risk letting humanity catch up in technology and having diplomacy potentially fail? Hopefully they’re interested in observing or working with other life forms, but if they’re not in my mind them pressing the delete button is the obvious option.
I'll put it this way; You really only go out of your way to eradicate an ant mound if they're in your backyard, and there seems to be quite a bit of wilderness between "backyards" in this sector of the galaxy. Well, so far, at least. If we get another 'Oumuamua in my lifetime, I'm gonna start thinking otherwise.
I am 97% sure we will find incontrovertible signs that microbial life existed on Mars in the past. I hope that Perseverance is the one to find it. I am 23% sure we will eventually find signs of active microbial life on Europa. It's just a simple matter of chemistry and time, in my mind. And, once confirmed, I think it will be a minor footnote for the general populace. For science it will be an important milestone. But for the general population I think a small portion will have a bit of sobering perspective on the enormity of time; how long it would take for evolution to turn microbes into human beings. Right now, in America at least, we are taught there was a ball of fire and gas, and then things calmed down and single-celled organisms emerged from the goo, and then dinosaurs, and then Columbus discovered America. They are all equidistant points on the timeline. But a discovery of the evidence of life on another planet - possibly long before there was life on Earth - would cause the "think-ier" people to have a fresh accounting of the timeline of history, and the full scope of what 3 billion years actually means. That will be exciting for some, and unnerving for others, I suspect. And there will be the dogmatic minority who cling desperately to their religion(s) and deny plain evidence. But they don't factor into my life or thinking, so I don't really care what they think.
I have no background to support my thoughts other than an interest in space and science. If humans survive long enough I expect it will happen, but I agree with your sentiment. I think the timespan will be so vast as to make it meaningless to speculate about it now. How long before we could communicate and travel to the nearest star? We should definitely still try though! My issue with the Fermi paradox is the assumption is that 1% of "life" on a planet becomes intelligent and similarly that 1% of those develop the necessary tech. I think those figure is way, way, waaaaaaaay too high. As an analogy - how many types of living creatures on earth have developed tech to communicate beyond earth? Is it 0.01%? Still like I say it's just my own thoughts without any scientific research to back it up. I'm personally a bit of a doubter that life will ever be found elsewhere,
I think we’re at a pretty similar spot here, I really do think there’s other life out there- just that it seems so unlikely we’ll find it it’s effectively not there at all, at least in a human timescale. Which is why finding it at close as Mars would be pretty devastating in my mind. Of course, finding microbes or something wouldn’t have to mean imminent death, I would just be much more nervous. I think most calculations there are at least a couple of orders of magnitude off. Doing some rough napkin math, over the course of the 3.5 billion years we’ve had 1 (2 if you’d want to include Neanderthals maybe) gain enough intelligence for my arbitrary definition to include them as “intelligent”. One could maybe argue some of the smarter animals should be included but I don’t think it’s going to affect the math much. If a species is a “type” of life form, then there’s 8.7M now, or about 8.7B ever if the internet isn’t lying to me. Sticking with the million to be safe, we’re at about 2/8.7M or 2.229e5% every 3.5B years if I’m doing that right. Then we’re the only example of intelligent life we know of to even dabble in space exploration and communication, so I’m not sure how to estimate that part - on one hand it’s hard for me to imagine intelligent life not staring at the stars and reaching out for them, on the other hand I’m stuck in my human existence and probably wouldn’t understand what a different intelligent life form’s existence is like if I had one sitting in front of me explaining. It might be unlikely even at cosmic scales, or it might be near 100%