City lights on other planets key to the search for alien life
Earth-like planets in space? (NASA)
Technical signals such as lights, industrial gases, large buildings, and interstellar spacecraft give basic indications of the presence of extraterrestrial beings
Researchers have suggested that scientists looking for potential extraterrestrial life should monitor "city lights" from alien civilizations .
The search for extraterrestrial life in general has long focused on "biomarkers", which are elements or characteristics produced by organisms other than humans. The list of biomarkers includes the presence of methane in a planet's atmosphere.
According to these researchers, astronomers have been looking for "technical indicators" for more than half a century, with their focus generally on radio waves ; Similar to Wow! [There is an incident that scientists at the American University of Ohio picked up a strong radio signal coming through space, and they thought it was coming from a non-human civilization in the universe. This happened in 1977, and it was later found that it was caused by astronomical accidents related to the stars]. Therefore, it remained a rule Prioritizing technical indicators “in their infancy, as opposed to the science of live indicators.”
In a new study published in the journal "Acta Astronautica" (Acta Astronautica), the researchers studied a set of technical indicators that are based on the technology available on Earth civilization [that is, they considered that a civilization in the universe would issue technical indicators issued by human civilization on our planet]. , as well as future expectations of the technology that we may develop at a later time.
The researchers wrote that one of the most prominent technical signals on the night side of the Earth is the issuance of city lights at night, but on the ground this matter is based relatively on large cities such as New York and Tokyo.
However, it is possible that the more developed and advanced peoples on the outer planets have built more cities on a large area of their planet, which may make their lights brighter and easier to observe.
Road and street lights are the main source of light emanating from the ground, as they are reflected on cement and asphalt, which makes them "easier to distinguish them from other sources in the atmosphere."
Although it will be difficult to observe a number of cities similar to those on Earth even with telescopes designed to be launched during the next decade, work is underway in the development of the "Large Visual Ultraviolet Infrared Scanner" known as "LUVOIR", which It will be launched in 2039, and it will be able to detect some city lights in cosmic space.
In addition to lights, the researchers also suggest looking for gases produced by anthropogenic processes such as a by-product of manufacturing or for a particular purpose, such as nitrogen dioxide, CFCs, HFCs, perfluorocarbons, sulfur hexafluoride, and nitrogen trifluoride.
In the same context, huge artificial buildings such as generators or sunblocks that reflect light and constitute a strong technical indicator, in addition to giant facilities, waste heat and emission from interplanetary travel vehicles, all of which "are based on high-energy processes such as fission, fusion and antimatter."
The list of technical indicators included in the study was not complete, and there are other possible indicators that were not mentioned in the study. Therefore, more studies are needed in order to understand the extent to which it is possible to proceed within the process of searching for alien life .
The researchers concluded that "future missions may also include the search for technical indicators as additional scientific evidence without the need to allocate additional resources or design considerations for the tools used in monitoring these indicators. Tools for finding technical indicators may already be available, but the matter needs effort on community level to begin serious research.
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