The strange new place we’re looking for ancient aliens

AFTER years of neglect, telescopes are focused on some of the oldest stars in our galaxy amid new hope of finding intelligent civilisations.

Artwork of the Allen Telescope Array consisting of 350 satellite dishes which will act as one large telescope to search fo a...

THE notorious Fermi paradox highlights the contradiction between the high probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilisations and the lack of discovered evidence of such civilisations.

If it’s so likely that intelligent alien life is out there, why haven’t we found it yet?

Perhaps we’re looking in the wrong spot. That’s the logic behind the SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) Institute’s latest decision to look in a much neglected section of the Milky Way.

Researchers at the SETI Institute will spend the next two years scanning some of the oldest and smallest stars in our galaxy, known as red dwarf stars, in hopes of discovering signs of ancient alien life.

Red dwarf stars have been described as the Lilliputians of the galaxy due to their diminutive nature. They are some of the oldest and dimmest stars we can observe.

Researchers are optimistic about the fresh search as red dwarf stars comprise roughly three quarters of all stars in the Milky Way. But despite their abundance, they have previously failed to command much attention from alien hunters.

However that is set to change as over the next two years as SETI will focus the Allen Telescope Array — a group of 42 antennas in northern California — to scan more than 20,000 red dwarf stars in one of the biggest searches for extraterrestrial civilisations to date.

Artwork of the Allen Telescope Array in California used to search for alien signals. Picture: SETI/Institute.

The reason red dwarf stars have been largely ignored so far is “because researchers made the seemingly reasonable assumption that other intelligent species would be on planets orbiting stars similar to the Sun,” SETI Institute engineer Jon Richards said on the organisation’s website.

But a number of exoplanet studies in recent years have suggested the prospect of finding habitable zones around red dwarf stars might be much higher than previously thought.

“This may be one instance in which older is better,” SETI Institute astronomer Seth Shostak said. “Older solar systems have had more time to produce intelligent species.”

It’s still a pie in the sky dream, but it’s not out of the question that we might scan signs of a much older, even more intelligent, civilisation — and bust the Fermi paradox wide open.