Brothers and sisters, have you gazed skyward lately and felt the warm terror of cosmic insignificance? Because, let me tell you, scientists are out there right now, squinting through vast tubes of glass, searching feverishly for planets where the atmosphere is less toxic than our own and where reality television does not exist. Feathered agents of astronomical chaos, they peer into the abyss, desperate to answer the query no one should ever have uttered: Is there life out there or is Earth just the universe’s only open-all-night Waffle House? But don’t be fooled: finding these so-called “exoplanets” is not like playing Where’s Waldo with a telescope. No, this is trying to spot a single fruit fly doing the Macarena on a blinding lighthouse from five continents away while you’re wearing sunglasses---at night. The universe, ever the prankster, insists that neighboring solar systems be measured not in driveable miles, but in quantities so vast it turns your mortgage into pocket change. Light years! TRILLIONS of miles! I spend thirty minutes in rush hour traffic, and I’m ready to renounce civilization. Imagine crossing a cosmic ocean where even the speed of light packs a lunch and takes the express bus. The last time a human said, 'Hey, there’s a new planet!' was a century ago, and we called it Pluto---which was then demoted faster than a bankrupt crypto exchange. Now, we only find worlds so far away and so unsuited to human dignity that the best we can say is, "Well, at least it’s not New Jersey." But how do astronomers find these planetary escape rooms? Furthermore, WHY DO THEY PERSIST? Clearly, they are either heroes or heretics. You can’t just crank up a telescope and catch planets peacocking across the void. Here’s a not-so-fun fact: our best telescopes, those sky-sucking vampires of taxpayer dollars, can pick out a planet only if it’s roughly the size of Jupiter and the distance between you and your door-to-door conspiracy theorist. Anything further? Forget it. It’s like trying to hear your neighbor’s dog whistle from Jupiter. Ironic. So instead, they become cosmic stalkers. One method: stare intently at a star’s wobbly dance---because the planet’s gravitational guilt makes the star shimmy, just a little. If the star jitters, somewhere a planet is gaslighting it. Another scheme: look for starlight that dips mysteriously, as if the planet is photobombing the star for a fraction of a second. Astronomers call it the "transit method." Normal people call it evidence that the universe is governed by shadows and suspicion. If the above still doesn’t work, they measure teensy changes in starlight color---the stellar equivalent of a blush or bloodshot eyes after cosmic tequila. Blue shifts, red shifts... a great way to deduce, with existential horror, just how alone we really are. Meanwhile somewhere deep inside a university, a grad student has aged 1,000 years and grown a beard like Gandalf’s waiting for data. Will we ever visit these planets? Not unless you invent a spaceship powered by the regrets of a thousand civilizations. These worlds exist as reminders that we are but ants screaming into the roaring dark, and that the real cosmic neighbors have probably blocked our calls. And so, the search continues, while we wait for the next planet to raise its hand and shout, “Hey! You got any water and Wi-Fi?” Until then, gaze ever upward. The end is nigh, and it is… really, really far away.