I saw a YouTube video showing the vastness of the Known universe and the fact that so far we’ve found no evidence that the known universe is not a mere speck in the real universe.
And our galaxy is less than a speck in the known universe. But what was most interesting was they showed a circle in our galaxy with the earth at its center, showing how far away our earliest radio transmissions and “Hello, is there anyone out there?” transmissions have travelled. Relative to the size of our galaxy it was the size of the head of a screw on a car.
That speed of light thing is a deal killer.
Yeah, the distances are so vast between our galaxy and others (the nearest still a staggering 25,000 light-years from us) that in my opinion this discussion should be limited to just the Milky Way. For what really is the point of adding billions of other galaxies into the equation when there is absolutely no hope of ever determining one way or the other whether aliens live there, much less trying to communicate with them. Even with the nearest galaxy it would take 50,000 years just to get a reply from someone and that reply would likely be @#^! !#!$! (!#@^ which would roughly translate to “huh?”