Extraterrestrial

The key to finding aliens may be to search for technological remains

By T.K. Randall
June 20, 2026

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) Even if we are not the first or only intelligent civilization in the universe, it is entirely possible that many other advanced civilizations rose and fell long before humanity ever arrived on the scene.

In a new study headed up by astronomer Brian Lacki of the Breakthrough Listen Initiative at the University of Oxford, researchers argue that the best way to find them is to search for the remains of their largest structures - technological wonders of a scale we can only dream of matching.

Traces of them, Lacki argues, could have even ended up on worlds within our own solar system.

One such example is a Dyson sphere - a large structure (or swarm of smaller structures) built to surround and harness the energy from an entire star.If this swarm was not carefully monitored and its position not adjusted on a routine basis, the individual platforms within the swarm might begin to collide with one another, causing a devastating cascade and producing a large amount of debris.

Eventually, this debris could end up becoming vast clouds of dust (or 'technograins').

"As the solar system passes through this reservoir, the worlds within it would be exposed to a sprinkling of technograins, and a small fraction of those can land softly enough in the regolith of worlds like the Moon," Lacki wrote.

So could there really be remains of an alien megastructure in our own solar system ?

Only time will tell.

Source: Gizmodo

Tags: Alien, Extraterrestrial