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Finding Life In Space By Looking For Extraterrestrial Pollution
coondoggie writes: If what we know as advanced life exists anywhere other than Earth, then perhaps they are dirtying their atmosphere as much as we are. We could use such pollution components to perhaps more easily spot such planets. That's the basis of new research published this week by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. They say that if we could spot the fingerprints of certain pollutants under ideal conditions (PDF), it would offer a new approach in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence."
After all these years of running SETI@Home, we still haven't found any extraterrestial TV signals carrying alien porn. :/
In what other ways are we assuming alien life is like us?
Well, pollution as in atmospheric O2, not pollution as in SUV exhaust. Atmospheric O2 is not the Earth's "normal" state, its a byproduct of life.
... and so began global climate change 1.0.
If I remember correctly, Earth's original atmosphere was SO2 based and some photosynthetic creature with a sulfur based metabolism started emitting O2 as a waste product
Judging by the pollution content of their atmosphere, I believe we have arrived at the latter half of the 20th century.
I would have used different words expressing essentially the same sentiment.
Our first encounter with an alien civilization will be the EPA trying to fine them millions of dollars.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Yes, that pollution is called dark energy
Aliens don't know better than to shit where they eat. We could be the only species in the galaxy that's so stupid.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Just tune in for fusion and fission bombs.
Would they register on a radio telescope?
What kind of moron came up with that? Let's see, life was here for like 500 million years, for about 150 we've been ruining the atmosphere, and 100 years from now we'll have solved it. So there's a 0.0000000000000001% chance that we'll find a polluted but populated world.
nuff said
So let's assume the premise of these proposed observations and let's assume that we actually find a planet with a high pollution content and let's further assume that we're only able to detect the type of pollution that can never be created from some naturally occurring process e.g. don't look at Venus and assume that it was once a beautiful place until acid rain formed. Such a planet will be quite a few light years away, perhaps hundreds. So what we would be looking at is the pollution from a hundred years ago. If this civilized planet is smart enough to fix it, they are more advanced than we are. But we may never know. The EPA was created 44 years ago and many people think this planet is more polluted than ever. We might have to stare at said distant polluted planet for more than 50 years to find out if they fixed it. Then again, if the atmosphere clears up in a year or two, then they either are even more advanced than we are or they destroyed themselves and their planet healed itself. Or maybe the indigenous population actually exists because it's polluted by human standards. Or this whole thing may mean nothing.
scanning for radio communications. It's an activity that we've been doing only for a couple of hundred of years now (pollution that is, radio is even shorter) and we have a around 100 000 years worth of time in our galaxy so we have to be lucky and find a planet where the inhabitants polluted their planet around the time relative to their distance from us. Trying to come up with better and more easily detectable biomarkers that cover a larger portion of the planets lifetime is a much better prospect.
Might be used for communication even. But the bandwith will be very narrow: about 2 bits per century, as it took us that long to really mess thing up...
What if the aliens aren't a bunch of irresponsible, selfish shitbirds? A civilization as advanced as ours or better could go unnoticed because they have a clean atmosphere.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The search parameters suggested in this post will yield only low quality results.
I would rather search for vomit traces - that way we will find a civilization that knows how to party hard!
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
species as stupid as we are.
Maybe when they come to earth looking for food they'll leave us alone because we wallow in our own poo.
For those of us a bit older who remember the 70's this is nothing new. When the liberals were attacking plastics they used the party line that plastics and other pollutions would outlast all life on the planet. And that aliens visiting our planet long after we are gone will know that we existed. Thank God that these nutters got squashed liked pimples on a baboons arse and we still have plastics today.
More of a re-hash from a the view that we are the aliens.
Every time we talk about SETI, people say "who the hell says they use radio waves"
the answer is, of course "well, it seems plausible, and it is SOMETHING we can look for."
Then we talk about Kepler and everyone says "Who the hell says they have to live in the Goldilocks zone?"
the answer is "well it seems plausible and it is SOMETHING we can look for.
So now we have pollution. Same question, same answer.
This is how science and exploration work... Lets say we get really good at all three types of search... What are the chances that complex life lives outside the "habitable zone," does not produce radio signals, and does not produce industrial pollutants? If we look for all the signs we can think of, we increase our slim chances by a slim margin.
Every specific thing we look for is a specific thing we can find.
If we're looking for "pollutants", who's to say what is "abnormal" for a particular atmosphere? Mars's atmosphere contains some 95% CO2, and it is highly unlikely that was caused by extraterrestrial life. Changes in composition couldn't be distinguished from volcanic activity or metabolic activity of simple organisms. Think about the oxygen release when photosynthesizing bacteria started.
Also, to simply look for CFCs assumes that aliens use them for their hairspray too, which is a bit of a wild assumption. Even we don't use that anymore, there's a number of other ways to make aerosols. There could also be a number of other viable candidates for refrigerants based on the average temperature of the planet and whether it's more economical to use something else instead on that planet, say fluorine is extremely rare on that planet.
It's worth a shot, though.
Finally, a useful application for Professor Farnsworth's invention.
This seems awfully short sighted. If we were pigs we'd probably look for others by seeking out piles of crap and filth... and we're kind of doing the same here. I'd like to think that as we advance technology beyond setting things on fire for energy, that we'd start to clean the place up-- maybe even leave it cleaner than when we got here.
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