Is the Milky Way a boneyard of long-dead civilizations?

That's the position of a new study published to the arXiv database.

The authors looked at a range of factors presumed to influence the development of intelligent life, such as the prevalence of sun-like stars harboring Earth-like planets; the frequency of deadly, radiation-blasting supernovas; the probability of and time necessary for intelligent life to evolve if conditions are right; and the possible tendency of advanced civilizations to destroy themselves.