We may be able to find evidence of advanced alien civilizations in pulverized traces of their technology. Oxford astrophysicist Brian Lacki argues in a new, yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper that, instead of searching for radio signals from space to find aliens, which would require active maintenance, we should look for “passive” signs of their technology that endure without upkeep, as the possibility of aliens existing at the same time as us is low. Dr. Lacki identifies three types of “passive” alien technology signs: the occulter, the glinter, and the diffuser. An occulter is an object that an advanced civilization may create to block light from a star. Such an object could have a transit signature that astronomers on Earth might recognize as unnatural, and it would require no active maintenance, power source, or radio transmitter. We would simply observe a dip in a star’s brightness and suspect something unusual. A glinter is an object like a giant lens or mirror that a civilization could use to concentrate a star’s light. A diffuser, on the other hand, would scatter any light that falls on it in many directions. All three of these possible objects require no active maintenance and could provide evidence of unnatural phenomena. However, the best way to find these signs may not be by searching for large intact objects but rather by looking for the remnants of such structures, which Dr. Lacki refers to as “technograins,” microscopic debris that can get caught in the solar wind and possibly reach planets and moons in our galaxy. The astrophysicist posits that if we sift through the Moon’s surface, we could find microscopic dust suggesting alien life.
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