We'll find E.T. with a molecule, not a message: The grand discovery of alien life is likely to come in the form of frustratingly subtle chemical clues.

People downvoting you aren't thinking things through honestly. Sure we don't have the technology to explore our cosmic neighborhood, but a civilization even a thousand years ahead of us could have near light speed technology for all we know. It took us only half a century from building the first plane to fly to the moon.

Yes the universe is "just too big", but our cosmic neighborhood is relatively small. Sure of course even our galaxy is astronomically big, but it's even more astronomically old and there has been MORE than enough time for civilizations just a little more advanced than ours to expand.

Your math is a little off though, the Parker Solar Probe is the fastest man made object, and would reach about 0.064% the speed of light by 2025. A that speed it would still take about 165 million years to go from end to end, and a lot more to stop at every planet.

/r/Futurology Thread Parent Link - astronomy.com