
Upcoming missions to look for 'biosignatures' in exoplanet atmospheres - dnetesn
https://phys.org/news/2020-02-earth-cousins-upcoming-missions-biosignatures.html
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doctoboggan
I've been excited for JWST for years. I don't think people realize how close
we are to strong (positive or negative) evidence for the existent of life on
other planets. It could be coming within the decade.

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cletus
If you we find a lot of life signals in nearby star systems that's bad news
for us if they're sentient but probably good news for us if they aren't.

The difference here is that if, say, you find 5 sentient civilizations within
1000 light years then statistically it's highly likely there are a ton of them
in the Milky Way. Since we see no evidence of a true spacefaring civilization
(most notably, the evidence of a Dyson Swarm) then it's likely there is a
Great Filter ahead of us and statistically speaking we're probably doomed.

If we find lots of evidence of life but no sentient life then it's more likely
we're passed the Great Filter.

So this could be a real good news or bad news type scenario.

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tgflynn
I don't think sentient is the right word to use here.

Cat's are probably sentient, but they won't be building Dyson Swarms any time
soon. On the other hand a non-sentient artificial super-intelligence might
well be able to build them.

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doctoboggan
I think the word usually used here is "technological" species.

