Related papers: Projections of Earth's technosphere: Scenario mode…
The search for technosignatures--remotely detectable evidence of extraterrestrial technology--draws upon examples from the recent history of Earth as well as projections of Earth's technosphere. Facilities like the Habitable Worlds…
The search for technosignatures from the Galaxy or the nearby universe raises two main questions: What are the possible characteristics of technosignatures? and How can future searches be optimized to enhance the probability of detection?…
The search for spectroscopic biosignatures with the next-generation of space telescopes could provide observational constraints on the abundance of exoplanets with signs of life. An extension of this spectroscopic characterization of…
How long a technological civilization remains active, and what determines whether it collapses or persists, is a central question for both projecting humanity's future and assessing the prevalence of detectable intelligence in the galaxy.…
This work describes the context and approach for the detection of spectroscopic signatures from planets in the habitable zone of nearby stars. By understanding the limitations of current observatories, future telescopes can be understood,…
Over the past two decades, enormous advances in the detection of exoplanets have taken place. Currently, we have discovered hundreds of earth-sized planets, several of them within the habitable zone of their star. In the coming years, the…
Thousands of planets beyond our solar system have been discovered to date, dozens of which are rocky in composition and are orbiting within the circumstellar habitable zone of their host star. The next frontier in life detection beyond our…
The intuition suggested by the Drake equation implies that technology should be less prevalent than biology in the galaxy. However, it has been appreciated for decades in the SETI community that technosignatures could be more abundant,…
This paper aims to review the diverse range of technosignatures that have been proposed in the literature. We organize the review by scales, starting carefully from Earth, then zooming out to Earth's orbit, the solar system, including the…
Earth system analysis is the study of the joint dynamics of biogeophysical, social and technological processes on our planet. To advance our understanding of possible future development pathways and identify management options for…
In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), the highly incomplete sampling of the technosignature search space is often considered as a plausible explanation for the persistent lack of detections over six decades of searches. If…
Nitrogen dioxide (NO$_2$) on Earth today has biogenic and anthropogenic sources. During the COVID-19 pandemic, observations of global NO$_2$ emissions have shown significant decrease in urban areas. Drawing upon this example of NO$_2$ as an…
Earth remains the only known example of a planet with technology, and future projections of Earth's trajectory provide a basis and motivation for approaching the search for extraterrestrial technospheres. Conventional approaches toward…
Agriculture is one of the oldest forms of technology on Earth. The cultivation of plants requires a terrestrial planet with active hydrological and carbon cycles and depends on the availability of nitrogen in soil. The technological…
The upcoming extremely large telescopes will provide the first opportunity to search for signs of habitability and life on non-transiting terrestrial exoplanets using high-contrast, high-resolution instrumentation. However, the suite of…
Warm rocky exoplanets within the habitable zone of Sun-like stars are favoured targets for current and future missions. Theory indicates these planets could be wet at formation and remain habitable long enough for life to develop. In this…
The biosignatures of life on Earth do not remain static, but change considerably over the planet's habitable lifetime. Earth's future biosphere, much like that of the early Earth, will consist of predominantly unicellular microorganisms due…
Upcoming biosignature searches focus on indirect indicators to infer the presence of life on other worlds. Aside from just signaling the presence of life, however, some biosignatures can contain information about the state that a planet's…
Exoplanet characterization missions planned for the future will soon enable searches for life beyond our solar system. Critical to the search will be the development of life detection strategies that can search for biosignatures while…
Humanity has wondered whether we are alone for millennia. The discovery of life elsewhere in the Universe, particularly intelligent life, would have profound effects, comparable to those of recognizing that the Earth is not the center of…