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[QUOTE="pj, post: 3624407, member: 2524"]
Three points:

1) Why do you have to survey empty space? If you survey all the stellar systems, you will find all the life. No species is going to confine themselves to empty space and avoid stellar systems. Matter and energy are too useful.

2) Astronomical number of stars - I don't think you appreciate the strength of exponential growth; and that astronomical numbers are not that big. If you make robot spaceships that can duplicate themselves once a year, and start with one, then in a thousand years you have 2^1000 spaceships which is 10^300 spaceships. There are a little over 10^11 stars in the Milky Way, so in a thousand years you will have 10^288 spaceships per star. If in our solar system they focus on earth, where we have less than 10^11 people, that's 10^277 spaceships per human to monitor us.

3) Time to explore - The diameter of the Milky Way is 100,000 light years, so if you are limited by the speed of light, in 100,000 years your spaceships have reached every star in the galaxy. The galaxy is 5 billion years old. There's plenty of time to explore everything.
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