Could we find alien life via its pollution?
Could we find alien life via its pollution? But one day about 10 years ago, a colleague knocked on Gonzalo González Abad's door and asked him an unexpected question: "If you were looking for traces of a technologically advanced alien civilisation, light years away from us, how would you try to do it?" "Most of the NO2 on our planet comes from industrial activity," says Giada Arney of Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center, who co-authored a 2021 study on the potential for discovering alien civilisations by searching the galaxy for NO2 pollution. "One might also think about temporal technosignatures that could give you additional information about what's going on in the planet's atmosphere," says Arney. Getty Images Some human-made chemicals - like ozone depleting chorofluorocarbons - have effects which can last hundreds of years Besides the short life of NO2, however, there's also the issue that there are quite a lot of natural sources that produce it – from lightning to wildfires, so finding it might not be hard proof that an alien civilisation had developed internal combustion engines, for instance, or any other NO2-spewing technology.
Discover Related
Bacteria found on asteroid was actually Earthly contamination, scientists report
Scientists cook ‘alien haze’ that could help us find extraterrestrial life
Opinion: Science could finally discover aliens. What does that mean?
If alien life is artificially intelligent, it may be stranger than we can imagine
Exciting findings, new ideas in hunt for alien life
Toxic industrial chemicals found in run-off water in woodland near landfill
NASA Is Getting Really Serious About Tracking Air Pollution
Nasa and Italian space agency to work on air pollution mission
Pollution caused one in six deaths worldwide in 2019, finds study
Alien lifeforms ‘unlike anything we’ve seen’ could be hiding in the clouds of Venus
Could humans have contaminated Mars with life?
Household aerosols release more harmful smog chemicals than UK cars
Air pollution: Low ozone layer found over Brahmaputra river valley
Alien life could be growing in more environments than we realised, study suggests
Nasa could find alien planets that host life after new oxygen breakthrough
Air pollution particles may reach fetuses in the womb, study finds
Could light, sound pollution attract the interest of advanced aliens out in space?
HOW MUCH NO2 IS SAFE?
Astronomers found a planet where life might thrive, and it’s just 31 light-years away
India hosts 3 of the 50 most polluting sources of nitrogen oxides globally: Report