Skepticism, Science & Pseudoscience

Interstellar distances are VAST. Much vaster than most people understand.

To illustrate this, let me point out that our galaxy, Milky Way, which contains about 300,000,000 (300 billion) stars is on a collision course with Andromeda, which contains about 1,000,000,000 (one trillion) stars. That will happen in some four to five billion years from now. I know, brace yourself.

Here's a link to a couple of animations of that event:

or this:

A while back I asked an astronomer friend of mine, when the two galaxies collide, how many stars will actually crash into each other. His reply: "We don't know for certain at this point, but the best guess is no more than ten."

No more than ten stars out of 1.3 trillion. Stars really are a very long way apart from each other.

Which brings me back to the OP. While I'm more than willing to accept the possibility that intelligent beings travel between stars, it simply isn't very likely, given the incredible distances involved and the extreme unlikelihood of faster than light travel.