Know What to Look For: NASA Reportedly Moves to Fund the Search for Technosignatures on Alien Worlds

The possible signatures scientists are expected to look for include various technological contraptions like solar panels and satellite swarms, as well as chemicals that are “unlikely to be produced naturally”.

US space agency NASA is going to fund a new effort to look for signs of alien civilizations’ presence in outer space, which will search for possible evidence of extraterrestrials altering their respective environments, the Daily Star reports.

According to the newspaper, this new initiative is aimed at uncovering the so called technosignatures, i.e. “scientific evidence of past and present technology”, such as atmospheric pollution, solar panels, megastructures or satellite swarms.

Dr. Avi Loeb, the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University, pointed at a particular planet, Proxima b, which orbits “the nearest star to Earth” and which is “thought to be tidally locked with permanent day and night sides”.

Scientists are also expected to look for traces of chemicals that are “unlikely to be produced naturally”, as they too might point at some technological activity of extraterrestrial origin, the newspaper adds

Sourse: sputniknews.com