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NASA is looking for advanced extraterrestrial civilizations and has announced a new plan to find them: technosignatures.
These are signs of technology coming from elsewhere in the galaxy. As a species, we have been broadcasting various signals in space since the first radio broadcast more than 100 years ago. If any advanced civilization clashed with these signals, it would indicate our presence in the universe. It goes without saying that a good way to look for signs of intelligent life would be to look for markers of its technology.
In the Milky Way, it is estimated that up to 40 billion Earth-sized planets are in the habitable zone (where there is not too much heat or cold water) and the Milky Way is the one of the 100 billion galaxies in the universe. This makes it difficult to imagine that the Earth is the only planet where intelligent life has evolved. But finding it poses enormous problems – problems that NASA now hopes to solve.
With congressional support, the space agency is about to hold a workshop on the subject to establish "the most promising avenues of research" for finding advanced extraterrestrial life forms. This will help steer investments in the future and find the best partnership with private companies for any project.
Technosignatures are generally in the form of communication signals, for example radio or laser emissions. In recent years, some enticing discoveries have sparked enthusiasm. An example is the discovery of fast radio bursts – radio signals from deep space, the unknown origin. It got even more exciting when one of these signals was repeated.
Another is the mysterious star KIC 8462852, also known as the "extraterrestrial megastructure" star. The observations showed strange gaps in the brightness of the star, indicating that something immense was passing in front of her. One suggestion was that a civilization from another world had built a huge structure to derive energy from it.
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Scientists are almost certain the aliens are not behind either one of these cases, but the excitement that they generated shows the public's appetite for the possibilities that they offer.
With renewed efforts to seek intelligent extraterrestrial life, NASA hopes to search the sky for anomalies such as KIC 8462852. "Scientists warn that we will need more than an unexplained signal to prove the technological existence. For example, there can be a lot of radio interference from terrestrial sources, "said the space agency in a statement.
"Although we have not yet found any signs of extraterrestrial life, NASA is expanding the exploration of the solar system and beyond to help humanity find out if we are alone in the world. universe, "the statement said. "After studying the water on Mars, probing promising" oceanic worlds ", such as Europa or the moon of Saturn Enceladus, and looking for biosignatures in the atmosphere of exoplanets, NASA's science missions And maybe this life could be more technologically advanced than ours.
After the NASA workshop, a number of speakers will answer questions via a Reddit AMA starting at 1pm. EDT.
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