EXTREME TECH - Until someone invents warp drive, the only way we can inspect distant exoplanets is with a powerful telescope. However, even the most capable telescopes can only catch faint glimmers from exoplanets. In a new study, scientists from the University of California, Riverside, lay out a method of detecting potential alien activity, and it doesn't require a warp drive—just a powerful observatory like the James Webb Space Telescope.
The work is based on the idea that an advanced alien civilization might want to modify a planet to make it more habitable. While humanity is nowhere near capable of terraforming a planet, scientists have studied the kind of modifications we would have to make. Applying these ideas to long-distance observations resulted in a collection of "technosignatures" that would be detectable from many light-years away.
This work assumes several things about a hypothetical alien civilization, most notably that they require liquid water to survive like life on Earth. That means they might want to modify the atmosphere of a planet in their solar system to make it temperate in the same way humans have fantasized about changing Mars or Venus.