Raphael ThysPeople have long wondered whether there's life in outer space. The physicist Enrico Fermi even put forward a famous paradox, which runs along the lines of "If... 20.12.2022, Sputnik International
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In a new paper now in preprint, a team of researchers proposes using a Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) to track gravity waves. They suggest that alien spacecraft (Rapid And/or Massive Accelerating spacecraft (RAMAcraft), as the study calls them), should one exist, could leave behind gravitational waves that could be detected here on Earth.The researchers specified some of the factors that would need to occur for such a scenario to develop. First, they calculated that the ship would have to be about the size of Jupiter to generate gravitational waves capable of reaching Earth.The ship must also travel very fast, at about a tenth the speed of light (almost 300,000,000 m/s). And it must be close enough - about 326,000 light-years from Earth (the Milky Way is 100,000 light-years across). Only under these conditions could the LIGO researchers detect the gravitational waves generated by the alien spacecraft.The researchers also noted that if aliens use warp engines, scientists on Earth would also be able to detect them using the same technology, because such a ship would also generate gravitational waves.The LIGO is a large-scale physics experiment and observatory designed to detect cosmic gravitational waves and to develop gravitational-wave observations as an astronomical tool. Two large observatories were built in the United States with the aim of detecting gravitational waves by laser interferometry. These observatories use mirrors four kilometers apart which are capable of detecting a change of less than one ten-thousandth the charge diameter of a proton.