Sophistic musing: if civilizations could expand at exponential rates, rather than sigmoidally (locally) or linearly (long-term), we would have been in touch with aliens by now
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If you assume energy consumption at current human levels, and a growth rate of ~3% per year (current), it would take ~2,500 years for us to consume all of the stars in the galaxy
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So a single civilization going exponential anywhere in the galaxy at least 2,500 years ago would have consumed our sun by now
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Even taking into account the speed of light as a hard limit on expansion, it would still only take on the order of 100k years -- less than the age of humanity
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How do we know we are not already consumed by another civilization?
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Would this expanded energy consumption reverse the expansion of the universe, thereby increasing our proximity to aliens? What processes of physics would this entail?
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Yes, and if you assume humans retain current exponential population growth, humans will *completely fill the observable universe* in about 10k years. It's almost like "exponential growth" is just the initial phase of a more general curve for growth limited by carrying capacity.
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