Somewhere in the galaxy, an advanced alien civilization might harness energy from its star.
And NASA wants to know if it could detect this activity.
The space agency has some powerful telescopes — and it’s building more. As scientists increasingly peer at other rocky, Earth-like worlds, they evaluated whether it’s possible to pick up signs of widespread solar farms on such distant planets. After all, an extraterrestrial society will need power, and a sun-like star provides nearly inexhaustible energy for billions of years. Human civilization, for example, has advanced from largely burning wood to using coal, and now increasingly uses modernized energy sources like solar power.
“We propose it’s a natural technological evolution that an advanced civilization could make,” Ravi Kopparapu, a NASA planetary scientist who led the research published in the Astrophysical Journal, told Mashable.
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