To Find Intelligent ETs, First Look for Signs of Mining in Distant Asteroid Belts

To Find Intelligent ETs, First Look for Signs of Mining in Distant Asteroid Belts: "Finding advanced alien races in other parts of the galaxy isn’t so hard, according to Duncan Forgan of the University of Edinburgh and Martin Elvis at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Rather than look for direct evidence of cloud cities anchored to far-off rocks, we simply need to ask ourselves what our civilization might look like in the future, then look for signs of that. Specifically, we need to look at other planetary systems’ asteroid belts for signs of mining.

The idea is that at some point, our home planet will run short of natural resources, and when that happens we will have to tap asteroids for sources of metals and other materials that will enable future economies and technologies. Any other advanced, intelligent civilization would likely face the same challenge, and by scanning faraway asteroid belts for signs of interplanetary mining operations, we should be able to pick up signs of life with current and future telescope tech."