andyhickl is a builder of time machines.

If most of the stars in the habitable zone of the Milky Way are far older than our sun, and if the evolutionary sequence that occurred on Earth is reasonably typical, this suggests that most of the intelligence our galaxy was destined to host has already come and gone. Long ago, other thinking beings arose and either destroyed themselves or evolved beyond technological existence to some higher reality. As astronomers begin to find Earthlike worlds, they may find places where intelligent life once existed, but no longer does. When humanity, a young species, learns how to voyage through the Milky Way, it may be our bittersweet task to catalog what once existed.