Scientists at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands have proposed new ways to search for extraterrestrial civilizations, based on the identification of technosignatures – signs of the use of technology or industrial activity. The researchers' article was published in the journal Acta Astronautica. This is summarized in a press release on Phys.org.
It is noted that NASA again decided to start searching for alien civilizations, using new approaches for this. Investigations of near and distant space will first begin with the help of modern equipment, and later – with the use of more sophisticated instruments that will appear in the near future. All of them are aimed at a systematic search for signatures of various scales: from traces of industrial pollution in the atmosphere and clusters of orbiting satellites to giant astro-engineering structures, for example, heat shields or Dyson spheres, designed to optimally use the light of a local star.
A number of approaches can be applied to the solar system, which can be scanned for the existence of extraterrestrial probes that were sent in the distant past. Potentially visible signatures increase in size with distance, but some varieties, such as the Dyson sphere, should be visible even outside the Milky Way. However, scientists still do not know how successful the search for such “space footprints” will be.
Many experts believe it is highly likely that scientists will discover extraterrestrial life in the coming years, but it is likely to be represented by very simple forms.
