For decades, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has largely been predicated on a specific assumption: that advanced civilizations will inevitably grow, expanding their energy consumption and building colossal structures detectable across vast cosmic distances. This idea, famously encapsulated by the Kardashev scale, envisions civilizations as endlessly progressing, building gigantic spaceships or Dyson spheres around their stars. But what if this isn't the only possible future for a civilization? What if other, less visible, less "noisy" paths exist?
This intriguing question was at the heart of a recent SETI Live discussion featuring Dr. Jacob Haqq-Misra, a researcher at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, along with SETI Institute planetary astronomer, Dr. Franck Marchis.
Dr. Haqq-Misra and his team recently published a fascinating paper outlining 10 possible futures for Earth’s technosphere (the total of all Earth's technology and its interactions). This pioneering work challenges conventional SETI assumptions and suggests new avenues for discovering intelligent life beyond Earth.
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