The recent discovery of planets that seem to be "earth-like" is very exciting. Imagine what the next Kepler and next Hubble would be able to find out about our neighborhood?

Imagine if we could tell a planet light-years away was heavily industrialized?

Or if something like "sub-space signals", that is sci-fi today, was discovered, and suddenly we hear so much chatter we would feel like a kid lost in a big shopping centre. A very humbling thought.