Traveling to the stars is a physically impossible task. The distances are so enormous that we should abandon that idea.
It is said that the Viking space probe has left the solar system. But that's not true. It's completely false.
It hasn't yet reached a distance of one light-day. The dwarf planet Pluto is about 5 light-hours from Earth. The probe has traveled 5 times farther. And it was launched in 1977. It has been on its journey for 49 years.
But the Solar System extends to the Oort Cloud. A shell formed by trillions of icy bodies that are almost motionless. This shell, which marks the boundary of the Solar System, is located 1 light-year from the inner Solar System. That's 365 times farther from the current position of Viking 2.
And the next closest star, -Proxima Centauri- is more than 4 times the distance from the Oort cloud.
It's not foreseeable that any invention will allow us to reach the stars, even on journeys of thousands of years. The stars are simply beyond our reach.
Long-distance communication would also be nearly impossible. Communications would take place at the speed of light, but unless our hypothetical interlocutors were in our immediate galactic neighborhood, we would have to wait thousands or hundreds of thousands of years for each connection.
The SETI Project has been searching for radio emissions from stars in our galaxy since the 1990s, looking for extraterrestrial civilizations.
The conclusion is that, unless we're missing something, there could be 3 or 4 technological civilizations in our galaxy, at most 12, or even none at all. We might be alone.
There has been a total lack of evidence of intelligence in the signals received from the many millions of stars analyzed.
Of course, it could happen that there were civilizations, but that they were hiding.
Also, that they had discovered a previously unknown form of communication.
But it is most likely that Fermi was right, and the evolution of intelligent life would normally end in a singularity of self-destruction.
Whether we are alone in the universe, or knowing that others may destroy themselves and not survive their technological civilizations, it should make us realize how important our existence is.
Human beings have developed a technological civilization by taking advantage of a favorable climate over the last 12,000 years.
We should achieve a firm union of all human cultures, and with Science as our ally, prepare ourselves for the climate changes that our wonderful Earth will undoubtedly experience in the near future.
We must take care of our home. We have nowhere else to go.
Greetings.
Our only home.