thousands, maybe millions of years ahead of us in technology.
Lots of things most people don't think about when assuming those vague blobs of light are alien spacecraft. First off, the possibility of actual FTL (faster than light) travel is vanishingly small. Which means, as has already been pointed out, even at 99% C(the speed of light), it would take at least four years to get to the nearest star. Even if you assume an intelligent species out there with a much longer life span, that's a barrier to travel. Our medium-sized galaxy is about 100,000 light years in diameter, so actually exploring any significant portion of the galaxy is probably out of the question.
Something else about FTL that My Son The Astronomer told me recently: The faster you go, the more cosmic radiation you'd be exposed to, because you'd be travelling through it so quickly. Which means building a ship with sufficient shielding to protect those inside, might not be possible, no matter how advanced your technology.
Other things: How long it takes for life to evolve on a planet, then how long for intelligent life, then how long for a technological civilization, is a huge unknown. All we know is how long it took these things to happen on our little planet. My Son The Astronomer tells me that a lot of people in his field think we may very well be the first such in our galaxy. Maybe not.
He's in a PhD program in astronomy and is doing research on radial velocity, which is one of the methods used to find exoplanets, planets outside our solar system but inside the galaxy. So far thousands have been found, mostly gas giants, but some smaller, rocky, potentially earth-like planets. Here's a link he sent me yesterday about trying to find extra-terrestrial civilizations by looking for artificial light on the night side of a rocky planet: https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.09990 We are still a long way from being able to do so, and you'll see that what's proposed involves finding planets far more urbanized than ours is.
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