Alien Theorists Theorizing

The star at the center of our solar system has an estimated age of 4.6 billion years, while the Milky Way galaxy sits at a venerable 13.6 billion years old. Each day, new stars are cataloged and observed for the presence of orbiting bodies. Each day, humans angle our instruments at our nearest cosmic neighbors and listen for something to reveal that we are not the only ones searching for intelligent life in our galaxy. But what if we reached out and what reached back, did not have benevolent intent? If we were to discover that our fate as a species was to mirror the multitude of colonization histories upon our own world? The idea of an encounter with another species that has traveled across the vast distances of space to seek out Earth in order to invade and/or conquer our species has been around since the turn of the 20th century. A technologically superior race ravaging our planet towards their own unknowable or incomprehensible goals. At our current level of technology and scientific understanding, what wo