We are learning more and more that the universe is older than we thought before. We are learning more about hominid species that walked the Earth well before we ever thought.
So if we have been misjudging things based on lack of knowledge up to this point then it makes logical sense that if intelligent life exists beyond our solar system then it might be much older than we imagined and if no human mindset there is no reason why it would have destroyed itself.
Again, that is the negative human mind thinking itself the epitomy of intelligent life. Therefore as we are a destructive species that enjoys killing itself and the planet it is on any other life form will do the same. Professor Brian Cox is an exponent of the "They all killed themselves" blather which is a good indicator of FAR Syndrome (Fear of Alien Reality).
Decades and many, many millions have been spent looking out into deep space for a signal so old and far away that it will get someone a Nobel Prize but they need not worry that living alien life exists any more.
The "efforts" to look at nearby star systems has been somewhat lacking. If our Sol system is in the right place in the Milky Way (that isn't a thing but some astronomers do mention that) then how about our neighbours?
Forget all the grifters and "drone UAP" stories and think about this in a logical way. When UFO activity first started getting seriously noticed in the late 1940s and there was (there really was) discussion amongst some astronomers and scientists who followed the loose principles of Science and gathered information and analysed reports the main possible sources of origin were Mars and Venus. Our knowledge of the Universe is just toe-dipping at the moment but in the 1940s/1950s Mars and Venus were all we really knew to an extent.
Some astronomers did point telescopes in the directions of our planetary neighbours but then things changed.
The fanatics worshipping "space brothers" appeared and turned the whole subject of flying saucers into one of (as we know from all the available historical documents) right wing, racist belief -come on: tall, blue eyed, blond haired super human entities were the Aryan dream.
Suddenly anyone trying to take the subject seriously had the contactee and space brothers thrown back at them and wanting to keep their jobs and salaries....they withdrew. We know that the intelligence community kept and keep an eye on UFO reports and if they did not they would not be worthy. As one military man once told me: "Remember Pearl Harbor. We don't want any 'Pearl Harbors' from space!"
Also, UFO reports were good to hide secret aircraft development or even get "the enemy" to believe that you had something far in advance of anything in their arsenal (and the United States and Soviet Union took in a lot of Nazi scientists working on German research programs so....). Confuse the enemy. Warn witnesses that they need to keep quiet and quite a few did only revealing decades later that they believed what they saw was advanced US aircraft and it was their patriotic duty to keep quiet.
I know that certain agencies kept (and keep) an eye on UFO sightings as I used to exchange reports with a member of one agency up until the mid 1990s. UFOs are useful to the military and intelligence community in so many ways. If you know UFO history you will be able to pluck from a list of examples (or you could buy the Haunted Skies UFO Encyclopaedia and get educated).
It makes logical sense that, with the Universe the size it is, that the first place to look for "Them" is close by. In the 1960s on as TV programme that looked at flying saucer reports Carl Sagan stated that "intergalactic travel" would take too long and therefore regular UFO reports showed that we were not dealing with alien visitation. Oddly, Sagan stated that there was no reason Earth might not have been visited in ancient times -which leaves you scratching your head a tad. But then we know from people who were close to him that there were UFO cases that puzzled him but he was not allowed to talk about due to the work he undertook with certain agencies. The late Stanton Friedman stated in an interview that Sagan could not explain some cases but persisted as a skeptic in public. That is a whole other story.
The point is that Sagan, who was a very bright person and not an academic dullard always referred to the vastness of intergalactic travel. Publicly, that was that but no one asked why intergalactic when our own galaxy has millions of stars? Smoke and mirrors.
If Starlink satellites can be sent up in droves then why has no one sent up a large number of similar satellites but designed to spread out into the solar system with the task of simply looking for any intelligent signal or, as some have suggested, alien probes hidden in the asteroid belt?
Why have all efforts not been concentrated on our nearest neighbouring systems which makes far more sense unless, of course. you have FAR Syndrome? Odd lights are more likely natural phenomenon (UNP) and other sightings, single witness cases, we have to have careful with. But good, clear day time sightings and particularly multi-participant encounter cases are something we need to look at in more depth.
The Hill case is over 60 years old and even then not the first such encounter (just the first big publicised US case). Travis Walton-that is over 40 years ago. Why keep concentrating on those cases and the fake "Grey" phenomenon when there are cases out there with far more to offer? Thomas Mantell was not shot down by a UFO -he died as a result of making mistakes. Why do the grifters and Ufologists keep bring up these cases?
In my books I have looked at lesser known cases but good solid ones (nothing is 100% as for that we need a stolen alien artefact from a craft) which I looked at and tried to explain but when you have multiple percipients and physical evidence its pretty hard to explain.
Should we be probing our own system for (possible) alien probes? Yes.
Should we be concentrating our search for alien intelligence in neighbouring solar systems? Yes.
The question is why aren't we?
