The extraterrestrial intelligence search has been the game of patience and guesses. We have raised our radio telescopes towards the stars over the decades in the hope that someone might respond to us. But what should it do when that is the wrong direction? But what in case we are finding the untidy, accidental evidences of industry? This is the next phase of exploration and it is being pioneered by an unlikely instrument; the James Webb Space Telescope.
We don’t simply listen anymore. We are training to feel our way into the cosmic air to see whether there is a pollution.
The End of the “WOW!” Signal Era
That famous 1977 “WOW!” signal was a blip. A mysterious mystery that was exciting, and never was repeated. It taught us a hard lesson. To wait till a civilization radios a signal to us is analogous to hoping that you will be located with a torch in London when your friend is in Tokyo. The probabilities are negligible. The silence, therefore, is not evidence of the non-existence. It is evidence that we were limited in our strategy. We have to seek what can be abandoned, not what is being posted. This paradigm shift is the transformation of passive listening to active archeological research.
According to a statement made by an astronomer, Dr. Jacob Haqq-Misra: A technosignature is the equivalent of the discovery of a plastic bottle on an isolated beach. You need not see the person who left it to tell you that he was there.
Now, it is the hunt of such cosmic plastic bottles.
JWST: The Ultimate Gas Detector
So, how does it work? Forget flashing lights. JWST is a searching Telescope through a method known as transmission spectroscopy. It’s breathtakingly precise. As a faraway planet crosses its host star the starlight passes through the atmosphere of the planet. The molecules contained in such air create distinctive prints on the light. JWST detects that light with its infrared detectors, such as NIRSpec, which divides it into a high-resolution chemical barcode.
Scientists decode that barcode thereafter. They seek the anticipations: water vaping, carbon dioxide, methane. Now however they too are programmed to signal the impossible. Precisely, molecules whose existence in natural equilibrium should not occur. On the planet we refer to them as pollutants. We would refer to them as technosignatures in space. These targets include chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) chiefly. These are industrial refrigerants. They are well known to destroy ozone on our planet. They would be a sore thumb in an atmosphere of pristine exoplanets. The fact that they are artificial is not questionable.
An Application Case: The Kelt-9b Aberration
Let’s get concrete. Take the exoplanet KELT-9b. It is an experimental laboratory. It is a scalding hot Jupiter, revolving around a star that is blazing hot. In 2022, the first data provided with the help of the JWST led to the vivid indication of water and carbon monoxide. However, in the analysis there were also unusual, disorderly lines of absorption. The data was noisy, complex. This was not a failure to researchers of the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science. It was a rehearsal.
This was a sloppy data set that they tested their detection pipelines on. Was it clear and artificial spike that their models could pick in the storm? It was an exercise of crucial importance. The tool works. Dr. Ravi Kopparapu at NASA Goddard explained to me that all of the planets that JWST will observe have become technosignature candidates. We are filtering the universe even by default. It is not an eureka moment of discovery. It is an automatic, incessant exercise of doing away.
In addition to Smog: the Ghosts of Megastructures
It is not only the pollution of the atmosphere. There are some theories that indicate that there could be extremely advanced civilizations that may be constructed on incomprehensible scale. Avoiding all trigger-crafted satellites which would passively receive energy, imagine a swarm of energy-gathering satellites orbiting a star–a Dyson swarm. It resembles a pure science fiction. However, its mark would be material and perceptible. An asteroid half covered with technology would have a peculiar light curve. More ominously, it would radiate in the mid-infrared with surplus heat energy.
The MIRI instrument of JWST comes in here. We have adjusted our perception perfectly to this techno-thermal luminousness. Astronomers trace its origin back to that well-known star, KIC 8462852, or Tabby’s Star. For many years, its bizarre and irregular dimming puzzled scientists. Ground telescopes could not solve the mystery. Nevertheless, the JWST would have the liberty to look at it and create an ideal heat map. Do comets surround it?
Or some other more interesting thing? The telescope can resolve mysteries that have been there since decades. Guessing is no longer on our agenda.
The Deep Revelations of an Unspoken Discovery
This is the point of view that plagues me. And what might happen should we discover that CFCs, at 1,000 light-years, exist on a planet? We would not be reaching a living civilization. We were doing an interstellar exhumation. CFC molecules are capable of existing in an atmosphere tens of thousands of years. The culture that gave birth to them may well be distant. Extinct. We would have discovered a monument to their industrial age which survived them.
That changes everything.
Makes it the cosmographical search more than communicative. Insinuates it that widespread the manifestation most of smartness universe the in may take not the form a of beacon, a but tombstone. Is it not search a after friends. Is it hunt a after history, and even possibly warnings.
Your Role in This New Search
This may seem abstract science. It’s not. You are part of it. The amateur astronomers and citizen scientists all over the world analyze publicly available JWST data. NASA press conference may not reveal the next big thing. It may be the work of a PhD student or even a genius coder going through the archives of the public data. The frontier is open.
Keep track of the activity of such organizations as the SETI Institute and Breakthrough Listen. They have turned to incorporate technosignature studies. Reading a headline on a bizarre or a polluted exoplanet, find out more closely. The vernacular of discovery is changing. We are all learning to read it.
The Final, Unsettling Truth
Forget the little green men. The initial evidence of aliens will not be a saucer. It will be a graph. One peaks and breaks on a spectrum. A data point. This will be clinical evidence, silent evidence, and completely world-shattering evidence. James Webb Space Telescope made a philosophical question forensic. We are currently dusting the universe crime scene. And the disturbing fact is this: we may discover them, long cold, giving an account of ambition and what it brings.