If advanced civilizations are out there, here’s the breakthrough strategy that could bring them to light.
- If fusion energy is a must-have for advanced civilizations, evidence of its use could help us find aliens.
- A new study led by the University of Washington analyzes how deuterium-deuterium (DD) fusion regime could impact the deuterium-hydrogen value of an exoplanet compared to the surrounding interstellar medium.
- Upcoming space missions could possibly look for these wavelength emissions and provide compelling evidence for advanced life.
Scientists employ many methods in the search for alien life. One approach is using both terrestrial and space-based advanced telescopes for some good, old-fashioned stargazing. Radio astronomy has also produced some exciting results, even if they didn’t yield any aliens (yet).
Then there are the strategies that involve imagining ways that advanced civilizations would try to meet their increasing energy demands. While some scientists have speculated how to detect Dyson rings—megastructures encircling a star—from Earth, University of Washington’s David Catling is considering another not-so-far-future energy signature: nuclear fusion.
Fusion is the end-goal of terrestrial energy generation on Earth. By fusing together plasma of two light nuclei (in this example, two atoms of the hydrogen isotope deuterium), the strong nuclear force binds together these isotopes into Helium-3 and releases tremendous amounts of energy.
The one benefit of using only deuterium is that unlike many other fusion candidates (especially tritium), Earth’s oceans and atmosphere contain a lot of the isotope, also known as heavy water—around 35 grams for every ton of seawater. According to Catling’s new paper published on the preprint server arXiv—it’s been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal—astronomers could possibly detect the presence of such a deuterium-deuterium fusion regime on another planet by closely analyzing its atmosphere.
Read More – A New Method of Nuclear Fusion Is the Key to Revealing Alien Worlds, Scientists Say
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