Could life exist beyond the Solar System? (Patreon)

I had a podcast yesterday and we talked about physics ofc and also about life...

In the Universe, according to the latest estimates, there are between 100 and 200 billion galaxies. At such a scale, it would be strange if Earth were the only place where life exists.

But the problem life elsewhere, we cannot verify it.
Why?
The answer lies in the laws of physics, specifically in the Special Theory of Relativity (STR). No information can travel faster than the speed of light (about 300,000 km/s). Even the stars closest to us are located at distances measured in light-years.

The light from the closest star to us, Proxima Centauri, takes 4.2 years to reach Earth.

The planet Proxima b, orbiting Proxima Centauri, is the closest potentially habitable exoplanet to Earth.

If life does exist somewhere out there, any signal from it must travel vast distances. But even if such a signal exists, we may simply fail to catch it, life at its source could vanish before the signal reaches Earth.

Thus, due to the limitations imposed by the speed of light, we live in "cosmic solitude": not because life doesn't exist, but because we cannot exchange information with it.