Scientists at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute suggested in a recent study to stop searching for biosignatures in the atmospheres of distant planets, and focus on technological signs of advanced civilisations, as they may be found faster.
University of Pennsylvania astronomer Jason Wright and colleagues believe that alien technology is more common and easier to detect than biological signatures, as the number of planets or even star systems on which technosignatures can be found is much larger than the number of planets with signs of biological life.
According to Wright’s theory, technologically advanced aliens are easier to detect from Earth than billions of other worlds, even if they are teeming with life. An intelligent life form can create radios, lasers, spaceships, and even Dyson spheres. In this case, these civilisations can sow with their technologies not only their own planet, but also neighbouring ones, and even entire star systems.
Technology may even outlive the civilisation that created it by continuing to send technosignatures across outer space.
“We aren’t that far from being able to outline how machines might self-repair and even reproduce without any human input, so it’s also easy to imagine that technology might become self-sufficient and outlive its creators that way,” Wright told Inverse.
The authors of the study cite as an example our civilisation, that has scattered its own technologies throughout the solar system and even beyond and, notably, our space technologies could already be detected by aliens.
Moreover, they can continue sending technosignatures after our civilisation dies, according to SETI Institute astronomer Jill Tarter.
“The Lageos satellites will probably continue to orbit the Earth long after the planet becomes uninhabitable,” she said.