We have no knowledge about whether the evolution of life would necessarily lead to intelligence as Lacki pointed out, this is an empirical question - we need data to answer it. Moreover, we have known since the 1990s that habitable orbits are possible around each of them. Whether abiogenesis could occur under these kinds of flare conditions remains unknown.Īlpha Centauri A and B, the central binary, offer a much more benign environment, both stars being exceedingly quiet at radio wavelengths. Milan Ćirković and Branislav Vukotić asked in 2020 whether the frequent flare activity of Proxima Centauri would inhibit radio technologies altogether. Michael Hippke noted in a 2019 paper that rocket launch to orbit from a super-Earth would be difficult, possibly inhibiting a civilization there from building a local space infrastructure. But let’s take the idea, as Lacki does, to Alpha Centauri, which we can begin by noting that in the past several years, Proxima Centauri b, that promising world in the habitable zone of the nearest red dwarf, has found its share of critics as a possible home to advanced life, if not life itself. One conceivable technosignature, rarely mentioned, is a world that has been terraformed.Īll this takes us well beyond conventional radio and optical SETI. We could conceivably detect power beaming directed at interstellar spacecraft or even an infrastructure within a particular stellar system. Atmospheres could throw technosignatures by revealing industrial activity along with their potential biosignatures. Other kinds of megastructure are possible, some perhaps so exotic we wouldn’t be sure how they operated or what they were for. We’re starting to consider a wide range of technosignatures rather than just focusing on Dysonian shells around entire stars. Brian Lacki (UC-Berkeley) examined the question from all angles at the recent Breakthrough Discuss, raising some interesting issues about the implications of technosignatures, and the assumptions we bring to the search for them. Is there any chance we may one day find technosignatures around the nearest stars? If we were to detect such, on a planet, say, orbiting Alpha Centauri B, that would seem to indicate that civilizations are to be found around a high percentage of G- and K-class stars.