Extraterrestrial

Scientists find a new way to search for intelligent alien civilizations

By T.K. Randall
June 27, 2024 ·  15 comments

Is there anyone out there ? Image Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech We've often talked about terraforming Mars, which would involve altering its atmosphere to make it more accommodating to life, but what if there are other worlds out there that have already been altered ?

Furthermore, if we actively searched for them, could they point us in the direction of an intelligent alien civilization ?

This is the idea behind a recent UC Riverside study which focused on looking for the telltale greenhouse gases in the atmospheres of extrasolar worlds that could indicate the presence of terraforming activity.

Ironically, such gases are those that we are trying to reduce here on Earth.

"For us, these gases are bad because we don't want to increase warming," said lead study author Edward Schwieterman."But they'd be good for a civilization that perhaps wanted to forestall an impending ice age or terraform an otherwise-uninhabitable planet in their system, as humans have proposed for Mars."

One example is sulfur hexafluoride - a gas with 23,500 times the warming power of carbon dioxide.

Existing telescopes capable of analyzing exoplanet atmospheres can already pick up these types of gases, meaning that it should be possible to search for them using today's technology.

"You wouldn't need extra effort to look for these technosignatures, if your telescope is already characterizing the planet for other reasons," said Schwieterman.

"And it would be jaw-droppingly amazing to find them."

Source: Astrobiology.com | Comments (15)

Tags: Alien, Terraforming