Mind Bogging Distances, Too Much to Overcome?

Greetings. The search for extraterrestrial life has been going on for as long as humans have been looking up into the skies. Nowadays we are applying our technologies to the effort, attempting to listen for signals that would confirm that advanced extraterrestrial civilizations are out there, themselves possibly listening for signs of the exact same thing. 

As of this writing, we have not found any evidence to scientifically prove the existence of extraterrestrial life, which is not really surprising considering the monumental distances involved. Since our efforts are focused on listening for signals or broadcasts traveling in normal space, the speed of light is the universal constant at play, constantly. 

299,792,458 meters per second, or if you are using an antiquated method of measuring things, 186,000 miles per second. 

According to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, the speed of light is the upper limit at which energy or matter can travel through normal space. Fast, but not really all that fast, at least when it comes to the vast distances involved. At the speed of light, broadcasts sent from the Earth to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, still take 4.2465 years to complete the journey. Television broadcasts being sent outward from the Earth, perhaps classic episodes of "I Love Lucy," will take approximately 1,500 years to reach the Orion Nebula. Radio broadcasts sent outward from the Earth will take about 2,500,000 years to reach the nearest galaxy, Andromeda. If any extraterrestrial civilizations do indeed reside in the Andromeda Galaxy, the first confirmation that aliens existed in the Milky Way Galaxy might be radio broadcasts of New York Yankees baseball games. The numbers and time frames involved are almost depressing to consider, but scientific reality cannot be escaped. 

With billions of stars in our own spiral galaxy, and billions of planets orbiting around them, and uncounted numbers of galaxies beyond our own, the universe contains endless possible abodes for extraterrestrial civilizations to arise, but unfortunately, there is still that distance problem. The vast distances involved make the search for extraterrestrial civilizations a difficult endeavor to undertake. There might be alien civilizations so far away from the Earth that any signals that same civilization transmits might arrive long after we have followed the trilobites into extinction. Those very same signals might arrive long after our Sun has exhausted it's enormous supply of hydrogen, and has begun the slow process of stellar self-destruction. Confirmation of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations might never come to pass if those aliens live far enough from our location that any reception of their signals or broadcasts is simply impossible. A depressing possibility. 

The universe is a mind-boggling place to consider, from the standpoint of scientific beauty and from the standpoint of sheer size. 

Thank you for your time and consideration.