Jan 6, 2022 07:25 PM
https://www.supercluster.com/editorial/s...-artifacts
EXCERPTS: . . . The idea that technological aliens might have sent probes out into the Universe is not an outlandish one, but in fact dates back to 1960, the same year that modern SETI began. [...Going...] against the grain to propose an alternative: that aliens might eschew radio contact and, instead, venture forth to explore the Universe themselves using probes.
They became known as Bracewell probes, and a variety of types and functions have been hypothesized over the years, from von Neumann’s self-replicating probes to science fiction author Fred Saberhagen’s destructive Berserker probes. The concept of sending robotic spacecraft to explore the Universe now seems a natural one to us, given the number of space probes that we have sent to the other planets in the Solar System...
[...] Of course, in lieu of a warp drive, interstellar travel must take the slow road. ... That time dimension works in our favor, however. Life in the Universe could be billions of years older than we are, and there’s been plenty of time for other civilizations to explore our Galaxy. Perhaps they sent a probe, or probes, to study Earth long ago. Those probes could still be in orbit today, perhaps intact, perhaps still active, or perhaps having long ago gone offline and now nothing more than a cloud of disintegrating parts.
It’s this possibility that has sparked Beatriz Villarroel’s interest, and she, along with others, are now exploring ways to search for these probes, or their remnants, which are referred to as non-terrestrial artifacts, or NTAs.
“The simplest way, in my opinion, to search for NTAs is in photographic plates taken before the Space Age,” she tells Supercluster. They cannot then be confused for human-built satellites, of which there are over 7,900 currently in orbit, plus the millions more pieces of space debris if they were captured in photographs taken before humans launched a single satellite.
The search for extraterrestrial technological artifacts, or SETA as it’s being referred to, is SETI’s latest frontier, with researchers growing increasingly confident about discussing the possibility that our first evidence of technologically intelligent extraterrestrial life may come in the form of technology that has traveled to our Solar System.
“The times are changing,” says Villarroel. “The search for NTAs is a valid area of research.” (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: . . . The idea that technological aliens might have sent probes out into the Universe is not an outlandish one, but in fact dates back to 1960, the same year that modern SETI began. [...Going...] against the grain to propose an alternative: that aliens might eschew radio contact and, instead, venture forth to explore the Universe themselves using probes.
They became known as Bracewell probes, and a variety of types and functions have been hypothesized over the years, from von Neumann’s self-replicating probes to science fiction author Fred Saberhagen’s destructive Berserker probes. The concept of sending robotic spacecraft to explore the Universe now seems a natural one to us, given the number of space probes that we have sent to the other planets in the Solar System...
[...] Of course, in lieu of a warp drive, interstellar travel must take the slow road. ... That time dimension works in our favor, however. Life in the Universe could be billions of years older than we are, and there’s been plenty of time for other civilizations to explore our Galaxy. Perhaps they sent a probe, or probes, to study Earth long ago. Those probes could still be in orbit today, perhaps intact, perhaps still active, or perhaps having long ago gone offline and now nothing more than a cloud of disintegrating parts.
It’s this possibility that has sparked Beatriz Villarroel’s interest, and she, along with others, are now exploring ways to search for these probes, or their remnants, which are referred to as non-terrestrial artifacts, or NTAs.
“The simplest way, in my opinion, to search for NTAs is in photographic plates taken before the Space Age,” she tells Supercluster. They cannot then be confused for human-built satellites, of which there are over 7,900 currently in orbit, plus the millions more pieces of space debris if they were captured in photographs taken before humans launched a single satellite.
The search for extraterrestrial technological artifacts, or SETA as it’s being referred to, is SETI’s latest frontier, with researchers growing increasingly confident about discussing the possibility that our first evidence of technologically intelligent extraterrestrial life may come in the form of technology that has traveled to our Solar System.
“The times are changing,” says Villarroel. “The search for NTAs is a valid area of research.” (MORE - missing details)