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Here in the solar system, the search for extraterrestrial life focuses on microbes. But in recent years, projects such as Kepler and HARPS have done something incredible, exploding our consciousness and our knowledge of planets beyond the solar system.
To date, 3,779 planets have been confirmed by various observatories, with thousands of additional candidates, most of the last 10 years. And with this catalog comes a renewed fervor to answer the question: did another planet in the Universe succeed in giving birth to life?
With a new generation of instruments ready for a new discovery boom – including the TESS space telescope and James Webb from NASA and CHEOPS and PLATO from the European Space Agency – research is growing; not only for life, but for the intelligent life that may have entered an advanced civilization.
This will be at the center of NASA's new efforts.
In particular, they will look for something called "technosignatures" – signals that could be inferred as evidence of an advanced civilization.
The Earth is exploding technosignatures all the time, most obviously in the form of radio waves.
Technosignatures can also consist of laser emissions, artificial light and heat from an exoplanet, or chemicals in the atmosphere that could be pollutants – these are all examples of signatures that could indicate an advanced civilization.
"In April 2018, a new interest was shown in Congress for NASA to begin supporting scientific research of technosignatures as part of the agency's life search," NASA explained in a statement. communicated.
"As part of this effort, the agency is organizing the NASA Technosignatures Workshop in Houston on September 26-28, 2018, to assess the current state of the field, the most promising avenues of research, and possible investments to advance science. "
There are organizations that seek extraterrestrial intelligence, including the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, founded by astronomers Carl Sagan and Jill Tarter, and Breakthrough Initiatives, founded by physicist Yuri Milner with the support of Stephen Hawking.
Historically, NASA's involvement in this research has been minor. In the early 1990s, it launched a SETI program for one year before being closed due to political pressure.
But now, research is more promising than ever, and recent observations and discoveries have only fueled the fire of curiosity.
"Kepler's discovery in 2015 of irregular fluctuations in brightness in what was going to be known as Tabby's Star led to the speculation of an extraterrestrial megastructure, although scientists have concluded that the cloud of dust was the probable cause.
"However, Tabby's Star has demonstrated the potential utility of looking for anomalies in the data collected in the space, as the signs of a technologically advanced life may appear as aberrations in relation to to the standard. "
We do not know if there is another life. All we know for sure is that there is a chance that this will not happen.
It's a bit like looking for a very small needle in a very large haystack; Only as technology evolves and progresses, our tools look much more like magnets.
If you want to connect to NASA's online workshop, the agency will broadcast it via Ustream here.
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