Though I like your article, and I have left many letters for my future self, I doubt scientists will find aliens. I am paraphrasing Avi Loeb here, that as long scientist require extraordinary evidence, they will never see the normal or mundane evidence. If we just take the 'TICTAC' ufo, or now 'UAP,' for an argument, no credible scientist has step forward and publicly said, "this is interesting, may I have more data?' It's irrelevant to me what the video actually is, but that there isn't even a reasonable dialogue bothers me. Yes, you can find videos showing how it could just be a glitch or an artifact of infrared camera and radar, but that's only plausible when divorced from testimony of Navy pilots. The pilots are very clear this wasn't a glitch, this isn't ours. If it is a glitch, and our top military pilots are chasing shadows, well, that’s a problem and requires some serious scientific intervention. Yeah, scientist won't be the ones that find aliens. I am not saying that the TICTAC UFO was alien, though I admit to being bias in that direction which disqualifies me from serious dialogue. But if you track the media of scientist brought into the studios to discuss this, they laugh, they ridicule, and they completely dismiss the subject. Not one expressed curiosity.
We have enough scientific understanding of our universe to extrapolate that if life happened on earth, it has to have happened in other places. Nature abhors a vacuum, and never makes just one of something. That alone has to be an argument that there is life out there. My understanding is science hates statistical anomalies. If we're the only life, what are those odds?
The other argument for why scientist want find aliens is that they can't even recognize sentient life on this planet, stating humans are the only ones. Scientist have stated, in independent studies that dolphins have names for themselves. They don't call it 'names' but instead use 'auditory signatures.' Individual dolphins have names, and they have group names. They hunt in cooperatives and are assigned task by groups and names. This means they recognize themselves as separate from environment and each other. Sounds like sentience. They will never make tools or smelt metals, because no opposable thumbs. They can't make paper in an aquatic environment. So, are they limited, yeah, but not necessarily lacking in sentience.
But the biggest evidence for there being more going on in animals is Koko the gorilla. How many words could she sign? She watched television and liked MR Rogers. Mr Rogers came to visit her and she hugged him and removed his shoes. That's more than memory and abstractions, isn't it? She asked for a kitten, she was given a kitten and they became friends. One day, while angry, she tore the sink out from the wall and threw it across the room. The keeper asked what happened. Koko said the kitten did it. She lied! That's recognition of potential future consequence and avoidance? When asked again, she owned that she did it. If that's not sentience, what is?
When Koko was asked about death, she replied, "Comfortable hole, bye bye." Yeah, scientist aren't going to find aliens because they can't see beyond their own paradigms. The people that believe are comparable to Galileo, standing on the verge of a new paradigm, saying look look, while the science of church says 'these aren't the droids you're looking for. move along.'
