and just why would some alien come to this out of the way, backwater solar system on the edge of our galaxy and visit earth whose atmosphere could be hostile to them?
“if there were other sentient beings in the galaxy (there aren’t)” Having surveyed our galaxy and all 500 billon (at current count) galaxies, you arrive at the conclusion that none of the trillions on trillions of planets have intelligent life; just amazing!
Let me explain. If we are to explore it will be with AI that will be automated, self replicating, multi duplicating, machines. If that has any possibility of working, and if there is any other life in the universe, it would already have been done and it would have hit every single star within our galaxy by now.
Just for accuracy, we’re not at the edge. We’re actually about halfway out on the disk, but in a small, not-very dense sub-arm. “Backwater”, I’ll give you.