A new study has detailed a revolutionary way to look for extraterrestrials – and that is by searching for man-made, or alien-made, object orbiting a planet.
There are over 100,000 man-made objects orbiting the Earth, and the same would likely apply to alien civilisations who are as advanced, or more so, than us.
To spot a planet with orbiting satellites, astronomers could use the ‘transit method’ – which is where light observed from a star dips as a planet passes by it, thus how exoplanets are found.
The same could apply to planets with orbiting collective junk, which astrophysicist Hector Socas-Navarro from the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics in Spain has called a Clarke Exobelt (CEB).