Posted: 17 Aug 2014 06:00 AM PDT
At a meeting in July, NASA
scientists predicted that humans will detect extraterrestrial life within the
next 20 years. The Kepler telescope has churned up thousands of new
exoplanet candidates over the past few years, and now scientists estimate that
there could be upwards of 100 billion planets in the Milky Way. At the same
time, here on Earth, we've found life thriving even in the strangest
places. That’s got some
scientists thinking that the odds are stacked in favor of life being pervasive
throughout the universe—and now it’s just a matter of finding it.
NASA’s prediction is based on two telescopes expected to debut in 2017 and 2018. The first is the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which will look for Earth-sized exoplanets. The second is the James Webb Space Telescope, which should (hopefully) be able to spot water and the chemical signatures of life in the atmospheres of other worlds. But there are other ways to look for aliens. Here are some of science’s most interesting proposals. They may sound a little nutty, but–who knows?– they might just work.
NASA’s prediction is based on two telescopes expected to debut in 2017 and 2018. The first is the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which will look for Earth-sized exoplanets. The second is the James Webb Space Telescope, which should (hopefully) be able to spot water and the chemical signatures of life in the atmospheres of other worlds. But there are other ways to look for aliens. Here are some of science’s most interesting proposals. They may sound a little nutty, but–who knows?– they might just work.
Where There's Smoke, There's Fire
NASA
Beacons In The Night
NASA
While SETI is listening for alien radio transmissions,
other scientists think we can also use our eyes in the sky to look for the
light and heat that might radiate from alien cities. Space.com reports that modern telescopes could spot a city the size of Tokyo if it were
located in the outer brinks of our solar system. Of course, other star systems
are much, much farther away, but the next generation of space telescopes may be
able to peer across the interstellar abyss.
Black Hole Sun
An advanced civilization eats up a lot of energy to
maintain itself.Cosmologist Clement Vidal from the Free University of Brussels has proposed that the REALLY
advanced alien species—like, the ones that could maybe tinker with elementary
particles and the space-time continuum—could potentially build artificial black
holes to harvest more energy than they would get from a star like the Sun. But
how can humans tell if a black hole is artificial?Discovery News explains: “Tell-tale evidence would come from measurements that showed the black
hole weighed less than 3.5 solar masses. That’s the minimum mass for crushing
matter into a black hole via a supernova core-collapse.”
Solar Panels On Crack
Another way for an alien society to fuel its advanced
technology is by using solar energy—just like us! Only, in the scenario envisioned by physicist Freeman Dyson in 1960, the aliens’ solar panels would completely surround a star. We could
theoretically detect these hulking megastructures by looking for their heat
signatures–some or all of the star’s light would be obscured, while its
infrared output would likely increase as it got re-radiated from the solar
panels.
Aliens Among Us
The Wait-And-See Strategy
The WETI Institute
When it comes to understanding the origins of life, a
group that calls itself WETI says it’s taking a novel approach: “Instead of actively searching
for extraterrestrial intelligence, the idea is to simply WAIT - until the
others find us.” Short for “Wait for Extraterrestrial Intelligence”, WETI’s
strategy (if you can call it that) is certainly the cheapest option. The group
jokes that it has secured funding until the year 2620.
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