How to find alien technology
National Astronomy Observatory, Socorro, New Mexico. Joe Sohm/Visions of America / Contributor / Getty Images
ByCamille Tuutti,
Freelance Tech Writer
July 8, 2026 05:30 PM ET
I wanted to know how astronomers actually go looking for life in space.
You might think this column is about UFOs and the Pentagon's recent declassified files. It's not. We're talking about technosignatures, the evidence of alien technology: a radio or laser signal, artificial chemicals in a distant planet's atmosphere, or a Dyson sphere, a giant structure built around a star to capture its energy.
People mix the two up constantly, and astronomer Dr. Jason Wright sets the record straight. "The two fields have been really distinct, but in people's minds, they're heavily conflated," he says. Wright is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics, an expert in SETI, short for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and he directs the Penn State...
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