I watched a program yesterday on Nat Geo. They said traveling at the speed of light it would take 8 years to send a message and 8 to get a reply from the nearest star in our galaxy. Sending a message to another galaxy would take hundreds of years. So a very boring conversation. Worse than having one here.
It's only in the last hundred years or so that we had radios. And only the last 50 that we could "listen" to the universe. It took us 100,000 years to get to this point and we are still stumbling. So hitting another intelligent life that was at the same stage is a 50-100,000 ratio.
Traveling to the nearest galaxy would take, at current technology, 1,000 years. 1,000 years even if possible would kill those in the space craft. We are not designed for 0 gravity, when we reach the next planet where life will survive, even if still alive. Visiting it will automatically kill us. It will have gravity.
The War of the Worlds theory of how the Earth would be protected, defends other planets from us. We had problems discovering Africa with the problems of the diseases, getting there, feeding and coping with the climate. Imagine going to a world that's totally Alien to us.
Or them visiting us. Because what applies to us applies to them as well.
So even if we could bend the universe like bending a piece of cloth so the two far corners are next to each other, warp drive, we can't get out of the space ship or our protective suits.
Just don't tell Hollywood.
