The search for extraterrestrial life

Actually our search for life on another world is a pretty recent development if you disregard all the Area 51 stuff.
I've always been of the opinion that if advanced civilizations wanted to be found they would already be here so either they don't care or they're not advanced enough.
 If they're not then the search for inhabitable worlds is really a search for other places for us to live.

Maybe like in the movie "Passengers".

Anyway

NASA discovers a possible way out

The search for life in the universe just got a boost with a major discovery of seven Earth-like planets in our galactic back yard.

The exoplanets – so called because they are beyond our solar system — orbit a dim dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1, roughly the size of Jupiter, in the constellation Aquarius, scientists announced Wednesday.

The new worlds are less than 40 light-years away – a cosmic hop of about 235 trillion miles – and could yield clues about extraterrestrial life, astronomers said.

Three of them are in the “Goldilocks zone,” the sweet spot in the space where conditions are just right for water – and possibly life — to exist, according to NASA and a Belgian-led research team.~snip~

Eugene Cernan Dead at 82

John Glenn and now this, I guess it's about that time that we start losing our modern explorers. The men who went to the ultimate "no man has gone before".
I honestly believe that the next time humans walk on another planetary body no on will be alive from the first.

Eugene Cernan, last man to walk on the moon, dead at 82

Cernan, an early NASA astronaut who was the last man to set foot on the moon, died Monday, NASA announced in a tweet. He was 82.
Cernan was the commander of Apollo 17 in December 1972 – the last lunar mission and one of the final Apollo flights. When Cernan stepped out from lunar module “Challenger” he became the 11th person to walk on the moon. His lunar module pilot, Jack Schmitt, was the 12th. But as commander, Cernan was the last to re-enter the module, making him the last person to walk on the lunar surface.~snip~