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Provided you're actively and systematically looking for evidence, then absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

But we've not even started doing that yet. None of the mars rovers have landed anywhere close to where we think is must likely to currently harbor life due to fear of contamination.

We've just now learned how to analyze atmospheres of exoplants.

5 years ago, we couldn't see exoplanets smaller than jupiter.

A decade ago, we couldn't see exoplanets at all.

We still can’t see the atmosphere of the majority of exoplanets. Can’t get around it unless we build a telescope thousands of times bigger than anything else or we make some incomprehensible breakthrough in optics. If we could we would detect life on another planet within a matter of a few hours of telescope time most likely.

I find the entire idea that life could only exist on earth farcical. A lot of people in this thread don’t seem to understand that we can’t directly image many exoplanets to begin with and that we haven’t even been trying to find life on other planets and moons in our own solar system, it has in fact been suppressed every time credible circumstantial evidence of life is found (Viking lander experiments and methane on mars both come to mind)

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