In our search for life beyond Earth, we might seek technological traces of an advanced, complex civilization through signals or emissions broadcast through space. A new paper suggests that instead of looking for light or radio signals, we should look for traces of ancient civilians that are long gone. One of the biggest barriers to finding intelligent life in the universe is time. The universe is roughly 13.8 billion years old, and our chances of overlapping with an advanced civilization during our small window of existence are slim. Accordingly, Brian Lacki, a theoretical astronomer with the Breakthrough Listen Initiative at the University of Oxford, suggests that we are more likely to find the ruins of a dead civilization lingering in the solar system. Lacki’s recent paper, available as a preprint on arXiv, argues that the dusty remains of long-vanished megastructures, like Dyson spheres, could settle on places like the Moon—assuming, of course, that these advanced aliens exist and go on to build such enormous structures.
Looking for aliens Scientists look for signs of life in the galaxy by searching for planets that have a recipe of biosignatures that resemble those of Earth. There is a chance, however, that proof of life beyond Earth might not involve biology at all. Evidence for intelligent alien life might come in the form of technosignatures, such as measurable emissions of electromagnetic waves. These technological traces of intelligent life wouldn’t come from our solar system, but rather from distant exoplanets that we cannot see up close.
