- News>
- Space
Soon, SETI to search the moon for alien artifacts
Scientists have suggested that although we have an entire universe to seek out aliens, perhaps looking in our own backyard would be a good place to start.
Washington: In a new study, scientists have suggested that although we have an entire universe to seek out aliens, perhaps looking in our own backyard would be a good place to start.
Paul Davies and Robert Wagner from Arizona State University have suggested a crowd-sourcing effort to find artificial structures on the moon. After all, lunar missions like NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter are returning some dazzling, high-resolution imagery of the moon’s surface.
If aliens have been there, perhaps we could spot evidence of their presence.
“Although there is only a tiny probability that alien technology would have left traces on the moon in the form of an artifact or surface modification of lunar features, this location has the virtue of being close, and of preserving traces for an immense duration,” Discovery News quoted Davies and Wagner as saying.
Alien-hunting programs like the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) have primarily focused on looking for alien transmissions being beamed around the universe, but the probability of success is extremely low. Other methods of alien hunting are therefore being considered and the moon has just become the logical “intelligent alien hunting ground”.
If these hypothetical aliens are advanced enough to traverse the vast distances between the stars, and if they decided to pay the Earth-moon system a visit over the past few million years, they may have used the lunar surface as an ideal observation post.
The idea that some kind of alien artifact may have been left behind then is logical. This “artifact” could be a footprint, spacecraft or structure – the LRO can spot the Apollo landers and astronauts’ preserved footprints from orbit, so it stands to reason that we have the technology to carry out this proposed lunar hunt.
“Systematic scrutiny of the LRO photographic images is being routinely conducted anyway for planetary science purposes, and this program could readily be expanded and outsourced at little extra cost to accommodate SETI goals, after the fashion of the SETI@home and Galaxy Zoo projects,” the researchers said. Although the probability for success is low, building a crowd-sourcing effort like the hugely popular SETI@home and Galaxy Zoo projects could be a very efficient and low-cost means to analyse the lunar surface. The study has been published in the journal Acta Astronautica. ANI
Paul Davies and Robert Wagner from Arizona State University have suggested a crowd-sourcing effort to find artificial structures on the moon. After all, lunar missions like NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter are returning some dazzling, high-resolution imagery of the moon’s surface.
If aliens have been there, perhaps we could spot evidence of their presence.
“Although there is only a tiny probability that alien technology would have left traces on the moon in the form of an artifact or surface modification of lunar features, this location has the virtue of being close, and of preserving traces for an immense duration,” Discovery News quoted Davies and Wagner as saying.
Alien-hunting programs like the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) have primarily focused on looking for alien transmissions being beamed around the universe, but the probability of success is extremely low. Other methods of alien hunting are therefore being considered and the moon has just become the logical “intelligent alien hunting ground”.
If these hypothetical aliens are advanced enough to traverse the vast distances between the stars, and if they decided to pay the Earth-moon system a visit over the past few million years, they may have used the lunar surface as an ideal observation post.
The idea that some kind of alien artifact may have been left behind then is logical. This “artifact” could be a footprint, spacecraft or structure – the LRO can spot the Apollo landers and astronauts’ preserved footprints from orbit, so it stands to reason that we have the technology to carry out this proposed lunar hunt.
“Systematic scrutiny of the LRO photographic images is being routinely conducted anyway for planetary science purposes, and this program could readily be expanded and outsourced at little extra cost to accommodate SETI goals, after the fashion of the SETI@home and Galaxy Zoo projects,” the researchers said. Although the probability for success is low, building a crowd-sourcing effort like the hugely popular SETI@home and Galaxy Zoo projects could be a very efficient and low-cost means to analyse the lunar surface. The study has been published in the journal Acta Astronautica. ANI