Researchers Believe City Lights Could Reveal Intelligent Alien Civilization

Intelligent life can easily be determined in Earth from space because of the visible city lights at the dark side of it. Abraham Loeb and Edwin Turner from Harvard University and Princeton University respectively are saying that other civilization could also be discovered in similar way.

The two think that the traditional way of searching other intelligent life, which is searching radio signals, may not be working well. One factor in searching alien radio signals is that television transmissions do not travel that far, contrary to popular belief.

Humans are currently generating less residual energy with the development of optical fiber. The two researchers assume that other civilization may have done the same making more difficult for scientists to search radio signal in proving alien civilization.

The idea is to look for particular type of light that would be different from natural light emitted through local stars. However, the two scientists admitted that the current telescope technology is not capable to search for city lights in other planets as it is still not sensitive enough. Nevertheless, they believe that the development of telescope capable of doing so might come sooner than expected.