The head of astronomy at the world-renowned university, Avi Loeb, told Express.co.uk one simple way to discover sophisticated otherworldly infrastructure. He started by explaining that the most common type of star by far is a relatively small Dwarf Star. He continued: “The planets in the habitable zone around the most common stars are tidally locked.
“That means they always show the same face to the stars.
“They have a permanent day side and a permanent night side.
“And you might think that if there is a civilisation out there they would try to transfer heat and light from the day side to the night side.
“And one can tell if that happens because the faces of the planet as it goes around the star would look different.
“If the dark side is illuminated artificially we would not see the same light curve.
“And the same is true about the heat distribution across the surface of the planet.
“So, potentially, if a planet is being terraformed by a civilisation, we could spot it without even imaging it directly – just by seeing the amount of light it would need or reflect and the amount of heat that we can read.
“One can look for artefacts on such planetary systems, for example, cells might cover the surface of the planet and they might show up given that it is quite different from natural rock.
“Or you could look for industrial pollution or some other industrial artefacts that are produced by civilisations.”
Professor Avi Loeb even claimed that it is indeed “quite possible” that we have already interacted with alien technology without realising.
He explained: “It’s quite possible that we did detect some traces of other civilisations but haven’t recognised them.
“The reason is we often imagine what we know already – what we have developed ourselves.
“And until we develop the appropriate technology, we would not recognise it out there in the sky.”
The esteemed astronomer elaborated that there was nothing far fetched about the search for alien life.
“Many people adopt the attitude that it’s never aliens.
“And this approach is similar to an ostrich putting its head in the sand and not even looking through the telescope to search for it.
“I think we should be open-minded. We should look for industrial pollution on the atmospheres of other planets and relics from dead civilisations out there.
“I call it space archaeology: basically digging into space and searching for traces of other civilisations that may not exist anymore.”
One such object, Professor Loeb contends, could be ‘Oumuamua’ – a thin, cigar-shaped entity that briefly shot through our solar system.
No one can currently explain the reason for its trajectory towards the centre of the galaxy, nor its lack of gaseous emissions.
Professor Loeb’s contentions are echoed by NASA scientist Silvano P Colombano, who similarly suggests that we may have already encountered extraterrestrials.
The scientist wrote in a research paper: “I simply want to point out the fact that the intelligence we might find and that might choose to find us (if it hasn’t already) might not be at all produced by carbon-based organisms like us.
“If we adopt a new set of assumptions about what forms of higher intelligence and technology we might find, some of those phenomena might fit specific hypotheses, and we could start some serious enquiry.”