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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 7766125" data-attributes="member: 177">Yes and no.  Stars with chemical composition similar to those in the rest of the galactic plane are found at great distances, but there's some question as to their density.  It may be that there are some outliers, but the main disk could still be 100 - 150 thousand light years.But, either way, that only makes the job of getting across the galaxy harder.  Folks often talk as if self-replicating machines are somehow static, never-changing entities, as if they can last 10,000 years without alteration, and would replicate perfectly, and that's a naive position to take.  It would be more reasonable to consider such a probe to be a living thing, with an electro-mechanical (or whatever) basis rather than a biological one.</blockquote>