So, given the age of the universe, the amount of time for civilizations to evolve, and even with no FTL travel ram-jet fusion ships could have explored the whole universe, with self-replicating machines to either watch, conquer, or just play head games, WHERE ARE THE ALIENS
With no FTL travel, it would take 6.9 billion years to reach the edge of the visible universe (assuming the early departure date; leaving now would take almost ten times as long). It took 4.5 billion years for life to reach the current stage of development on earth, and we are still incapable of interstellar travel. Even so, that gives us a rough baseline of 11.4 billion years ago for the formation of this society's planet. That's 2.5 billion years after the big bang.
Not impossible, but implausible, relying on early cataclysmic starbursts to reach the levels of metallicity required to form planets with atmosphere.
Even if we assume that this society does exist, they'd have to be within around 200 lightyears of Earth to begin to have an inkling that we were here. We only began broadcasting radio waves then.
Or, assuming that they have sufficiently advanced scanning capabilities, they'd have had to be (or passed) within a billion light years of Earth to be able to scan, receive results and arrive, since the estimated emergence of life. Even that's assuming that they're interested in life, or our planet. (A sphere of radius one billion lightyears represents around 1/738763 of the volume of the observable universe).
Given their extreme age, the physiological differences between them and us are likely to extraordinary. Our late-stage solar system is unlikely to be of particular interest. Given that limited life forms are so common, our early stages of evolution are equally likely to be uninteresting.
The Fermi paradox is not a paradox at all.
