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For decades, the search for life in space has focused on the search for tiny microbes that would hardly satisfy a growing appetite for connection with beings who resemble us more.
It was the aperitif of the main course, a search for sophisticated creatures that truly answered one of the central questions of humanity: are we alone?
Now, thanks to a new interest in Congress for new scientific research, NASA is changing its focus to look for life that is advanced enough to, as we do, create technologies.
The signs are called technosignatures, in relation to biosignatures, as in microbes, which show signs of life. Technosignatures are mainly in the form of radio signals allowing scientists to infer the existence of technological life in the universe.
A proposed US bill in April recommended that NASA receive $ 10 million to work with the private sector and philanthropic organizations to pursue a foreign life. It was not going to actually allocate the money and it should still go to the House and the Senate, but it is the first time in 25 years that the federal government has looked at using funds to seek extraterrestrial life.
The original program, called SETI, or the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, the federal funding lost in 1993 after a year of research was not a "little green man," then said US Senator Richard Bryan of Nevada.
Unlike SETI, NASA argues that the search for technosignatures goes further, focusing on radio or laser emissions, not just on communication signals. Our own radio and television shows have drifted into space, so we could receive signals from other beings, the agency said.
And signs of large structures or an atmosphere full of pollutants
– like ours – could prove that there is a civilization like the Earth elsewhere in the universe.
To begin the research, NASA is organizing a technosignature workshop in Houston from Wednesday to Friday to assess the state of the field and determine the most promising lines of research. Speakers will also hold an Ask Me Anything session on Thursday on Reddit. at 1 pm answer questions about research.
We do not know if NASA will find life outside our solar system. Drake's formula of astronomer Frank Drake postulates that there could be 10,000 intelligent civilizations in the galaxy. The Fermi paradox of Italian physicist Enrico Fermi says that if there was an intelligent life there, we would have met it already.
But the recent discoveries of the Kepler mission on multiple exoplanets, some of which have similarities to the Earth, and the TESS mission, which recently launched a satellite that has already found two new exoplanets, have sparked increased interest in extraterrestrial life. .
It must be rather an irregular radio signal to pass the test. NASA said that to answer the question of our place in the universe, it would require "unmistakable signs" of life.
Want more news from the space? Follow Go For Launch on Facebook. Contact the reporter at [email protected] or 407-420-5660; Twitter @ChabeliH
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