We might be living in the wrong part of the galaxy.
Elsewhere in the Milky Way, vast groups of ancient star populations are packed into dense ellipsoid regions, called globular clusters. Within these tight-knit patches of stellar bodies, there are no new stars and no collapsing supernovae. But evidence indicates these regions may be abundant in planets.
And, if this is the case, any advanced alien civilizations that evolve inside globular clusters would have a definitive advantage when it comes time to form an interstellar society, since the distances between stars in these regions would be far smaller than the vast stretches of space seen in our galactic neighborhood.
And this could make interstellar communication and travel much easier, potentially moving a budding "alien federation" far ahead of rival civilizations "land-locked" on galactic disks (like ours), according to a recent study shared to a preprint server.
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