Signs of Life

Review by Colter Smith

Normally scientists look for aliens by searching for radio waves. The idea is that if people on earth can emit radio waves, maybe other civilizations do too. Then newest project around this idea is called the Allen Telescope Array, which when complete will have 350 satellite dishes that act in concert. However many scientists think this is the wrong approach. Radios are becoming used less and less on earth, so a more advanced civilization could have stopped using radios altogether. A retired physicist has suggested a number of new ideas for finding intelligent life. The first is to look for pollution in atmosphere, such as synthetic materials that would be signs of industrialization or compounds that would mean life, such as a lot of oxygen in an atmosphere. Also, some civilizations may have been around for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. People theorize that a civilization this advanced may have built a shell around their central star to gather as much energy from it as possible, which we may be able to see on a telescope. Also, if the central star of a very advanced civilization began to turn into what is called a red giant, that civilization would try to stop that process if it could. The resulting star would look strange and we might be able to see it on a telescope.

If alien life were to be discovered, it would be the most important human discovery since farming. Intergalactic trade would usher in a whole new era of economic growth and prosperity and bring to this planet things we have never dreamed of. Alien ideas and concepts would blow our minds. Their technology could allow us to do things we had never imagined were possible and could make some of life’s most difficult tasks trivial concerns of the past. Finally it would show us that we are not alone in this vast universe.

I thought this article was quite good. It took fairly complex astrophysical ideas and presented them in a way that was understandable yet still interesting. This article also helped to show what a very complex Alien civilization might look like. Overall, I enjoyed reading it.