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"Assume" is a strong word, but if we observed an exoplanet with free oxygen in the atmosphere and stable levels of bioindicators (methane etc) for a period, and
by addaon 4y ago
"Assume" is a strong word, but if we observed an exoplanet with free oxygen in the atmosphere and stable levels of bioindicators (methane etc) for a period, and then saw CO2 spike from nearly zero to significantly higher levels... well, it's evidence of something.
- anonporridge 4y agoSure, but that's not related to this study. Maybe that's something we'll detect over the course of hundreds of years of observing, but the shear scale of the time of the universe makes the chances that some other alien species just happens to be going through an industrial revolution while we're around to observe it, are so astronomically small as to barely be worth considering. In your example, an intelligent species in an industrial revolution would probably be at the bottom of the list of likely explanations, simply because of how statistically unlikely it appears to be.