A team of scientists studied the observations made by the NASA Infrared Space Telescope (WISE), which searched for the apparent radiation of heat from the nearest 100,000 galaxies. Such a strategy in the 1960s was proposed by the physicist Freeman Dyson.
"If a highly developed civilization in the process of space exploration uses a huge amount of the energy of the stars of its galaxy for computers, communications, space flights or what we cannot imagine yet, fundamental thermodynamics asserts that this energy is emitted in the form of medium-length infrared waves" said in a statement co-author of the study at the University of Pennsylvania Jason Wright. "This is the basic law of physics that forces your computer to generate heat when it is turned on."
During this pilot study, the team did not find enough infrared radiation, which could be regarded as radiation from alien technology (G-HAT).
"Our results indicate that of the 100,000 galaxies that WISE could see in sufficient detail, not one is inhabited by an alien highly developed civilization that uses the energy of most stars in the galaxy for its own purposes," Wright said in a statement. "This is also interesting because the time of existence of galaxies is calculated in billions of years, which were a sufficient period of time to develop the existing alien civilizations," he added. "Or they do not exist yet, or do not use energy sufficiently powerful so that it can be calculated by it."
This does not mean that the G-HAT team did not find anything interesting, intriguing or incomprehensible in the pursuit of heat radiation. Indeed, about 50 galaxies showed high levels of radiation. Further research may help determine if this heat is generated by natural processes, or it may be a sign of intelligent aliens, the researchers say.
"Next time we study the light of these galaxies more closely, we must be prepared to reduce the sensitivity to alien technology to a much lower level, and to be able to better distinguish the heat emitted by advanced technologies from the heat of natural astronomical sources," said Wright. "This pilot study has just begun."
