STOP PRESS: No life on other planets!

To be more specific, I mean 'no human life on other planets', but I wanted to get your attention. Given the stats, I'm sure there is something somewhere, in a galaxy far far away, tapping away at their version of a keyboard.

But I'm equally sure that we're never going to be able to get in touch, talk to each other or exchange views about the films of Ingmar Bergman. So we're not talking about other types of life on other planets - we're asking whether we humans can ever live our lives on other planets.

This question rattles around like a guest who won’t leave. Not a week goes by but some scientist comes up with a press release about how finding a few kilos of water in moon dust makes life off Earth possible. Are they joking?

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