It’s almost trite to say I want that anomaly around that star to be ‘megastructures’. Everyone does, just about. We’ll never contact them of course- they’re simply too far away- but the knowledge of the existence of alien civilisation far beyond our own in it’s achievements would have a profound effect on us. It’d be like having an older sibling, someone to look up to. We need that right now.

‘Well, they got a system-wide culture together,’ we would think, ‘why can’t we?’ We humans do like to keep up with the neighbours…

But, personally, there’d be a big stress off my shoulders. What evidence we’ve gleaned about the universe suggests no intelligent creator or a plan, that we’re the creation of happenstance and vast amounts of time. Humans have no destiny and we could wipe ourselves out, or a rock could hit Earth any moment and wipe us out.

My greatest fear, so frightening I have trouble thinking about it, is a universe with no intelligent life left in it, just an endless darkness incapable of considering itself. ‘A single person,’ Olaf Stapledon wrote ‘is more important than a billion lifeless worlds.’

And I agree. Now… if there’s TWO intelligent species out there- us and them- I can chill out a bit. Double the chances.

Anyway, we should know within the year.