>This discovery provides a clearer picture of this red supergiant’s life and future death. Betelgeuse and its companion star were likely born at the same time. However, the companion star will have a shortened lifespan as strong tidal forces will cause it to spiral into Betelgeuse and meet its demise, which scientists estimate will occur within the next 10,000 years.
It's unfortunate our flesh lasts but a blink of cosmic time. That would be something to witness.
My preferred solution to the Fermi paradox is that hundred million year long lifespans become trivial relatively soon at which point sublight speed galactic travel becomes no big deal and the differing time scale means that not being contacted by an alien intelligence simply hasn't happened yet, have you tried to establish communication with an ant hill in the last 10 seconds? Everybody else in the galaxy who could talk to us lives so long that they just haven't tried to say hello in the last 10,000 years because they were out to lunch.