Exoplanets in the habitable zone of their stars discovered by the Kepler Space Telescope – matching … [+]
Astronomers heading the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence predict their quest might first spark an encounter with another world’s AI – an interplanetary emissary speaking in code.
With the discovery of more than 5000 planets revolving around other stars, and countless billions more projected to be spinning around the Milky Way, the chances of finding intelligent aliens appear to be rising.
While researchers surveying other solar systems once focused on detecting “biosignatures,” or chemical traces of even simple photosynthetic life, in the atmospheres of these exoplanets, scientists at the leading edge of the SETI campaign are now seeking “technosignatures,” or signs that an advanced civilization is transforming its globe or even actively sending out messages or exploratory spacecraft to surrounding stars.
The term “technosignatures” originated with astronomer Jill Tarter, who has been at the global forefront in conducting scans for signs of intelligent outposts across the galaxy. More than a decade ago, she sketched out the contours of the notion, and its overarching value in seeking out scientists and coders across other planets.
“If we can find technosignatures—evidence of some technology that modifies its environment in ways that are detectable–then we will be permitted to infer the existence, at least at some time, of intelligent technologists,” she proposed. “As with biosignatures, it is not possible to enumerate all the potential technosignatures of technology-as-we-don’t- yet-know-it, but we can define systematic search strategies for equivalents of some 21st century terrestrial technologies.”
Telescope arrays stretching across two continents
These days, connected arrays of radio telescopes – featuring a large number of small dishes – “are becoming the design of choice for …both targeted and all-sky [SETI] searches,” Tarter tells me in an interview.
As more globes are discovered, Tarter says, potentially habitable Earth-size planets around Sun-like stars will form the most promising targets for technosignature searches with these cutting-edge observatories.
When the next-generation Square Kilometer Array – stretching from South Africa to Australia – is activated, this “will be the first telescope with the sensitivity to detect Earth 2020-levels of radio “leakage” at interstellar distances,” Tarter explains in a fascinating study she co-authored with other scientists spearheading searches for hyper-technologies across the galaxy’s spiral disc of stars.
When activated, the Square Kilometer Array radio telescope could help humanity “detect a clone of … [+]
Potential to find a clone of humanity on another planet
“This is an important milestone in radio technosignature work, since it marks the first time that humanity will have the capability, in principle, to detect a clone of itself on a planet around another star,” Tarter adds in the paper “Nasa and the Search for Technosignatures.”
“As we learn to communicate with AI for our own benefits, we may become better in recognizing alien AI signals,” says Tarter, cofounder of the Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute in California.
A trailblazing planet hunter who inspired Carl Sagan’s blockbuster novel-turned-film Contact, Tarter also shines across the captivating bio Making Contact: Jill Tarter and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, which describes her as “a scientific star across the globe.”
Trailblazing SETI astronomer Jill Tarter was the inspiration for the central character in Carl … [+]
Communicating with extrasolar AI
“A possibility exists that in the near future, some type of communication may happen between an Earth-based AI supported system and an extrasolar form of AI,” Tarter predicts.
It might be possible, she tells me in the interview, that the first breakthrough in detecting an off-world beacon of life might actually be via an alien artificial intelligence.
Interstellar AI emissaries
Extraterrestrial AI created by remarkably futuristic civilizations, she says, might have spread across the galaxy by now, especially around Sun-like stars that formed billions of years earlier than the Sun.
Professor Jason Wright, director of the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center, agrees the first contact between Earth-based scientists and technologists on another world might be with an exoplanet AI, and that artificial intelligence agents might have already crisscrossed an archipelago of celestial colonies.
A generation ago, he told me in an interview, NASA cut its funding for SETI research under the direction of Congress, slashing the probability of finding fellow citizens of the cosmos. One of the globe’s foremost astronomers in the drive to seek out sanctums of incredibly developed technologies and cultures across this section of the heavens, Wright headed the crusade to persuade the American space agency to restore its backing for these interstellar explorations.
Since the start of this campaign, he adds, both NASA and the National Science Foundation have begun awarding grants to leading SETI scholars. Wright, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics, has himself received a $483,000 NASA grant to conduct an edgy study titled “New Approaches to Laser and Radio Technosignatures,” set to begin at the start of 2025.
As space telescopes discover more Earth-like planets orbiting alien stars – like the TRAPPIST-1 … [+]
Inventors and storytellers orbiting other suns
He has also played mentor, via his nationally acclaimed graduate course in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, to an expanding constellation of SETI scientists who have in turn taken up prominent positions across American academia, all while weaving a web of connections to push forward the mission to reach scholars and inventors, explorers and physicists – and even human or AI storytellers – orbiting other stars.
Just as vanguard American space outfits are now perfecting starships to explore and terraform Mars, their celestial counterparts in more advanced societies are likely to launch never-ending waves of space odysseys to reach other star systems.
And if these technologically sophisticated aliens arose in a multi-planet star system, they are likely to reengineer their surrounding worlds to perfect their habitability, Wright predicts. Detecting a star surrounded by concentric rings of incredibly similar planets with identical atmospheres could be a strong sign that these globes have been intelligently redesigned.
The expansion of hyper-tech civilizations across the cosmos should make the chances of detecting one of these ET outposts higher and higher with the passage of time, Professor Wright adds.
The discovery of intelligent life – even an extraterrestrial AI – moving out across the Milky Way would represent one of the most important leaps in human progress ever, he says, with consequences that change the future of the Earth and all its citizenry.
