Alien Science -- Level of Development
Two factors suggest that an alien civilization would likely be more advanced:
Astronomers and cosmologists observe that some other suns are much older than ours. If they have habitable planets, civilizations there would have had more time to develop
One astrophysical analysis indicated that three quarters of earth-like planets are older than Earth, with an average age 1.8 billion years older than Earth's 4.5 billion years
Science and technology evidently advance exponentially; there has been more progress in the last 100 years than in the previous 1000 years
Counter argument: development of science and technology may have been delayed, can have major setbacks, and could be cyclic; consider:
Not all of the chemical elements and organic compounds needed to produce life existed immediately after the Big Bang. Successive generations of stars and supernovae have produced these elements and compounds, dispersing them into interstellar space. Thus, favorable conditions may not have existed on older planets until billions of years after the universe began
Biblical Flood, Gn 6 - 8
Legend of Atlantis