[gaukes]

I'm not so confident we're in the top 20%. Our galaxy is middle-aged. Our star is only 4.6 billion years old in a galaxy that is 13.51 billion years.

There were several stars that blew up before we got the sun which means several systems and planets right in our neighborhood and that's just 1 star in the entire milky way.

Even at 1% the speed of light, it would take 2 million years to travel across the milky way which, relative to the age of the galaxy, is nothing.

[piptastic]

Sure, but let's say you're on the other side of the milky way. You can travel at 1% the speed of light. Why would you come to Earth or anywhere near it? It takes 2 million years to get here, so unless you know something is there, that would be an insane trip to make.

[gaukes]

Well, they wouldn't be looking for Earth specifically, they'd be looking for more resources which are everywhere. An intelligent and energy-hungry enough species would want to harness the power of every sun it can reach.

That growth would be exponential because acquiring resources provides more energy which allows them to acquire more resources even faster.

If an intelligent species doubled the number of stars they control every 2 million years, they'd have every star in the milky way in around 50 million years.

That's still like 0.2% the lifetime of the galaxy.