Dan Robitzski in Futurism –
If there are any intelligent alien societies out there, we may never be able to spot them until things go horribly wrong on their home world.
It’s one possible reason for why the search for extraterrestrial life hasn’t turned up anything, Caleb Scharf, the head of astrobiology at Columbia University, wrote in a Scientific American op-ed. When things are going smoothly at home, alien civilizations may not be putting any technosignatures out into the cosmos. But when facing the apocalypse, Scharf argues, there may be more visible signs for us to pick up on.