Check your hubris, Homo Sapien. An alien race developing under very different conditions could and would very likely discover the laws of physics in a very different way to us, resulting in technology that we can't yet imagine being straightforward for them.

Apropos "imagine": We are 98% identical to chimps at the DNA level. Meaning a 2% "advancement" above human DNA results in aliens who are more intelligent as 2-3 year olds as average human adults. We might just be (curently) too stupid as a species to understand alien technology.

If we survive this century of self-induced climate chaos (not at all a given) I expect we'll already have started to produce super-humans. If we survive until all the stupid humans (i.e. us) are bred out/killed off in another couple centuries then maybe we'll start to really move forward.