Is humanity the first technological species to exist in this solar system (or even on this planet?) The quick and easy answer is yes, but maybe we don’t know that for sure.

Prior Indigenous Technological Species

But if a prior technological, perhaps spacefaring, species ever arose in the

Solar System, it might have produced artifacts or other technosignatures that

have survived to present day, meaning Solar System artifact SETI provides a

potential path to resolving astrobiology’s question.

Lots of great tidbits in this paper:

Carl Sagan once toyed with the idea that the moons of Mars might be artificial objects.

A current astronomer suggests we should be looking for “city lights” on Kuiper Belt objects

This is in keeping with the show we did a while back about there potentially being many more planets in the solar system and we just haven’t discovered them yet. One of them may be home to a current (not extinct) technological civilization.

But if we can’t rule this out, what CAN we rule out? 

Prior civilization on Earth? No

Aliens living among us now? No

Simulation hypothesis / Matrix / Boltzmann brains? No

Occam’s Razor says we shouldn’t buy any of this. 

But maybe skepticism isn’t the whole answer?

Is there a benefit to be gained in exploring these unlikely scenarios? 

WT 438-751

Eternity Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) | Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

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