That about fills it - in a nutshell.
Like the ruling powers of Rome, back in the days of scientists like Copernicus, you could be put to the stake for suggesting things like "the earth orbits the sun and is not the center of the Universe" = Copernicus narrowly escaped being roasted, but the Inquisition put him under house arrest for the remainder of his lifetime - just one more roadblock to mankind's progression. And, heaven forbid anyone suggest that, in the billions of other stars "out there" like our sun, just might have planet systems too - better keep that under your hat if you didn't want to be a the main course at a public BBQ. It's only been recently that scientists have discovered and allowed as how our solar system is not the freak of the Universe = i.e. the only one in a unmeasurable super Universe full of literally billions of star systems...The Universes operate on set laws that opperate system wide. No matter how big the misplaced idea/ego that we are the biggest, best and most intelligent thing ever to happen to the Universe = 'tain't so. At least, I hope the Universe isn't in such dire straights
On the same note, the IAU just re-defined planet. May we have to re-define life as well. I can understand the concept of life, but the actual definition escapes me right now. If we find plant life on another planet, it doesn’t prove or disprove that there are other sentient beings out there. I’ve also always wondered why we sent language samples and a map on the probes that were headed out of the solar system. We can’t agree on a language (or even an alphabet) on a single planet. What are the odds that another species (even if they are intelligent) will be able to understand our language, or us them.
The laws of physics as we understand them say that C is the speed limit, so at a minimum it would take 8 years return trip to the nearest star (which, by the way, could harbour planets and is VERY similar to our own sun). The next nearest target star is about 11 light years away, 22 years round trip minimum. Oh yeah, I forgot, as your speed gets closer to C, your mass increases asymptotically, so you can never actually reach C until you have infinite mass, at which point it all becomes theoretical because you’ve probably destroyed the universe.
Hey, I just thought of something, what if the “Great Attractor” is actually something that tried to achieve the speed of light, and came close.