As far as we know, Earth is the only place in the universe where life exists and indeed, flourishes. We have been fascinated with the thought of alien life for many years and within the last century even begun searching for signs of it in the form of their transmissions and signals with programmes such as SETI.
A recent publication by Professors Avi Loeb of Harvard University and Edwin Turner of Princeton University has suggested that we could feasibly begin to search for extra-terrestrial civilisations with the next generation of observatories by looking for the glow from their city lights on the night side of their planet.
Observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the European Extremely Large Telescope (EELT) could begin the search for civilisations with extremely bright night lights by the end of the decade. Although, whether these extra-terrestrial city searching teams are granted time on these great observatories remains to be seen.
Recently, the University of Nottingham’s student radio station URN did a show on the possibility of alien life in the universe. Listen to it below and check out the other podcasts in the Science Show series.
