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Imagine if the cosmic internet was with us all along.

As if we were looking for smoke signals, and they were using radio.

...advanced alien civilizations could send messages within the Milky Way....

As these would have to live within the galactic habitable zone, and likely about a G2 star similar to our own, I doubt there are any.

We are alone, folks.

While there may be civilization which send out beacons of radio, laser, or neutrinos, this would likely happen for a brief span of time. The plain fact is these are terribly slow ways to try to communicate across the vast reaches of even our own Milky Way neighborhood. Any such civilization would likely be long gone before anyone received their beacon and bothered to respond.

The reason that a light speed beacon would be so short lived (tens or hundreds of years at best), is that either the senders would quickly give up such a futile task, or they would soon develop much better and faster means of sending out the signal. Using something like tachyon (faster than light particle), wormhole, quantum tunneling, or who knows what bit of advanced technology, they would be able to send out a signal capable of spanning the galaxy in far more reasonable period of time.

They might also then be able to detect the background chatter of many such signals from many other even more advanced life forms.

To their overwhelming disappointment, they might at last find that with 500 billion tachyon channels, there is still nothing on...

While there may be civilization which send out beacons of radio, laser, or neutrinos, this would likely happen for a brief span of time. The plain fact is these are terribly slow ways to try to communicate across the vast reaches of even our own Milky Way neighborhood. Any such civilization would likely be long gone before anyone received their beacon and bothered to respond.

The reason that a light speed beacon would be so short lived (tens or hundreds of years at best), is that either the senders would quickly give up such a futile task, or they would soon develop much better and faster means of sending out the signal. Using something like tachyon (faster than light particle), wormhole, quantum tunneling, or who knows what bit of advanced technology, they would be able to send out a signal capable of spanning the galaxy in far more reasonable period of time.

They might also then be able to detect the background chatter of many such signals from many other even more advanced life forms.

To their overwhelming disappointment, they might at last find that with 500 billion tachyon channels, there is still nothing on...