it sometimes is a bit sad to realize we will probably never confirm the existence of intelligent life forms somewhere else in the universe. Given the size of t

it sometimes is a bit sad to realize we will probably never confirm the existence of intelligent life forms somewhere else in the universe. Given the size of the universe, billions of galaxies, and each galaxy having billions and billions of stars, life obviously exists somewhere else, and we can safely say it exists in many places and intelligent life forms have emerged and have built civilizations somewhere else. Given the age of the universe, it's highly probable that other intelligent life forms have built civilizations way more advanced than the human civilization. Most of human scientific and technological progress happened in the last 200 hundred years. We can only imagine what a society with a 100 000 years head start would look like. I can't imagine what the human race will look like and will be able to do in 10 000 years. Our galaxy has a 100 000 light years diameter, even if an advanced civilization somewhere in the galaxy, on a planet 20 000 light years away had invented radio 10 000 years ago, we still wouldn't be able to detect it. By the time we detect it, who knows what technological progress they'd made by then. I tend to think that the answer to the Fermi paradox is that the universe is so big. Even if we could travel at the speed of light, the universe would still be huge and we would probably not be able to detect other intelligent life forms / civilizations. EDIT: Oops, looks like i got this Proxima Centauri distance a bit off :-) Updated the comment to remove this error, as the main point still stands.