Should clear and irrefutable signs of extraterrestrial life suddenly be discovered, such a revelation would, I think, certainly diminish and relegate our less concrete worries to the pettiness they're born, though there's probably still a question in timing of such feats and people, whether they voice it or not: I'm sure there are some secreted thoughts about how this spoils the holidays, vacation plans, campaigns--private, unlike the extent the news would upset the social contracts between borrowers and lenders. It makes me think about the episode of the Grand Inquisitor in the Brothers Karamazov, when Jesus is rejected because His return is interfering with the mission of the Church. I'll bet that some households would find that sort of incident exasperating while trimming the tree. Aliens of course are not guaranteed to solve all our problems, and there's no evidence of imminent discovery, although this a big unknown factor--like unanticipated technological break-throughs (like the democratization that quality, affordable three-dimensional printing or some new property distilled from research at CERN--or the fact that no one can reconcile that there are planets made of diamond and asteroids made of gold just out of reach of the prospectors)--and new constellations of distant worlds are coming into sharper focus every day. 
Given the potential for the foreign and unfamiliar, both as observers and possibly as the observed, wisely time and experiment has been invested in speculative, alternative biological chemistries so that scientists might not miss alien life when it presents itself. Abundance, valance--elective affinities, and chemical properties, solubility as well as solid-state performance are considered in all imaginable permutations, so as not to be guilty of chauvinism, even if the chance for interface and exchange seems to get less and less the more one diverges from the familiar. Maybe far-off extraterrestrial astronomers are dismissing Earth at this moment, seeing our home world as not even on the fringe of their Goldilocks Zone (EN/DE): too hot, too cold, too small, too large, too precarious and impermanent, exposed to the whims of a harsh and destructive universe. Just a little bit of mutual jingoism in science might make it impossible to recognize intelligence or even life. Our bodies and biology, too, adapted to life on the inclement surface of a planet instead of the sheltering underground or under the oceans, bent and woven with specific gravity, would probably repulse a being that developed under different conditions and limitations as overly fragile or brute. I hope that there is no conspiracy to spare our planning the mortification of changing our priorities, but I also hope that we are not blinded by our chauvinism and attitude to richness and variety (off-world or otherwise) that's at the edge of discovery.
Given the potential for the foreign and unfamiliar, both as observers and possibly as the observed, wisely time and experiment has been invested in speculative, alternative biological chemistries so that scientists might not miss alien life when it presents itself. Abundance, valance--elective affinities, and chemical properties, solubility as well as solid-state performance are considered in all imaginable permutations, so as not to be guilty of chauvinism, even if the chance for interface and exchange seems to get less and less the more one diverges from the familiar. Maybe far-off extraterrestrial astronomers are dismissing Earth at this moment, seeing our home world as not even on the fringe of their Goldilocks Zone (EN/DE): too hot, too cold, too small, too large, too precarious and impermanent, exposed to the whims of a harsh and destructive universe. Just a little bit of mutual jingoism in science might make it impossible to recognize intelligence or even life. Our bodies and biology, too, adapted to life on the inclement surface of a planet instead of the sheltering underground or under the oceans, bent and woven with specific gravity, would probably repulse a being that developed under different conditions and limitations as overly fragile or brute. I hope that there is no conspiracy to spare our planning the mortification of changing our priorities, but I also hope that we are not blinded by our chauvinism and attitude to richness and variety (off-world or otherwise) that's at the edge of discovery.
