If we ever receive signals from an intelligent civilisation, it will most likely be much older than ours. We humans have been sending signals out for only 102 years, spreading out at the speed of light. Our Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light years across. Our own signals have thus reached just a tiny corner of our own galaxy. If signals from the opposite side of the galaxy reached us, they would necessarily have been sent 100,000 years ago. Of course, the civilisation that sent them might have been no more advanced than us at the time they broadcast. They may have gone extinct shortly after sending the signals, a victim of their own clever technology, just as we soon will.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)