The theoretical study does not claim to have found any evidence of advanced alien civilizations; rather, it offers a new way to search for clues of their existence.
In the new paper, uploaded June 23 to the preprint server arXiv, the researchers argue that some of this dust originates from star systems beyond our own and, therefore, may contain evidence of long-lost alien civilizations. They also propose a new experiment that could potentially find these microscopic fragments within samples collected over the next decade or more. (The study has not been published yet, but it has been submitted to the International Journal of Astrobiology.)
Unlike Earth, the moon lacks a functional atmosphere or magnetic field, meaning that its surface is exposed to the vacuum of space. This allows cosmic dust and other tiny particles to embed themselves within the lunar regolith. (Image credit: NASA)
Until now, the search for evidence of advanced alien civilizations, known as technosignatures, has focused mainly on radio signals that could be emitted from inhabited exoplanets or hypothetical megastructures, such as Dyson spheres. However, these signals would originate only from active civilizations, not those that died out long before we could spot them.
Using computer models, the team predicted that pieces of tech up to 3 micrometers across (three-millionths of a meter, or about 3% the width of a human hair) could escape their star systems and travel across interstellar space for up to 1 billion years. Then, they estimated how much of this material could be reaching the solar system and how likely it would be to end up on the moon. (We already know that interstellar dust can penetrate the inner solar system because scientists found some within samples collected from the surface of Bennu, an asteroid that orbits between Earth and Mars and was visited by NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe in 2020.)
The moon is constantly being bombarded by tiny particles, some of which come from outside the solar system. (Image credit: University of Rochester illustration / Shubhonkar Paramanick)The researchers believe that a sample of lunar regolith with a volume of 35 cubic feet (1 cubic meter) could be enough to find at least one technological fragment. The team also proposed ways of combing through the material using microscopy, industrial materials analysis and AI-assisted imaging.
"Eminently reasonable"
Future missions in NASA's Artemis II program could bring back more samples of lunar regolith from the moon for future analysis. This photo shows the Artemis II mission lifting off April 1 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)Several upcoming space missions will collect fresh samples from the lunar surface, including China's recently delayed Chang'e-7 mission and future missions in NASA's Artemis program. These samples could potentially hold technosignatures, although the volume of regolith collected will be far less than what the researchers are proposing.
RELATED STORIESTherefore, we may have to wait until humans establish a permanent moon base before astronauts can collect enough material to be analyzed properly. This may not be that far off, as both the U.S. and China are planning to construct lunar bases within the next decade. Researchers also think the samples could be analyzed on the moon rather than on Earth.
"The concept of searching the lunar regolith for microscopic technosignatures is at once extraordinarily original and eminently reasonable," Bill Diamond, president and CEO of the SETI Institute, who was not involved in the new study, said in the statement. "This is a novel addition to the search methodologies applied to seeking evidence of technology as a proxy for life and intelligence beyond our solar system and we are excited at the prospect of bringing this to fruition."
Extraterrestrials quiz: Are you an alien expert, or has your brain been abducted?
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