[sandworm101]

So many preconceptions. Firstly, what exactly does "speeds with allow interstellar travel" entail? A being that was functionally immortal wouldn't care about travel times. And why assume that interstellar travel is even required? There is no solid reason why extraterrestrials need to huddle around stars. They might live in the void between stars. Heck, there could be millions of truck-sized UFOs dancing around in "our" ort cloud and we wouldn't even notice.

[WillAdams]

See my reply elsethread --- a truck sized enclosure isn't reasonable for life support and so forth.

[sandworm101]

>> truck sized enclosure isn't reasonable for life support and so forth.

Who said anything about life? A machine-intelligence could operate a tiny craft. And even a biological, think brain in a jar, doesn't need that much space. Astronomers cannot find or disprove the existence of Planet X in the ort cloud, an object at least several times the size of earth. An entire civilization could be out there and we wouldn't notice.

[bitcharmer]

Not a strong believer in LGM but I don't like your statement for two reasons:

1) life may take different forms, some of which we probably haven't even dreamt about

2) life is not necessary for inter-stellar probes to exist. In fact it probably makes more sense to make these things entirely artificial