Of course it will be their past, but our future, which we are investigating to some degree. So that is the story. Maybe the spade will luckily turn up a good site one day. We hope it will. It's just a question of being patient.
All stars are suns.
Our Galaxy, the Milky Way, is a spiral galaxy containing several hundred billion stars. The universe contains over a billion galaxies, or, in all, more stars than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of Earth. Out of the findings of the sciences that have converged to give us our present picture of cosmic evolution we draw certain conclusions that are the premises of a plausibility argument for the prevalence of technologically advanced extraterrestrial life. Planetary systems are the rule rather than the exception. Our understanding of the process of star formation leads us to expect planetary systems around most stars, and to expect a favorably situated planet in most systems.