Astronomers have begun a first-of-its-kind search for signs of “technosignatures” produced by super civilizations—those more advanced than ours—in galaxies beyond the Milky Way.

Technosignatures are evidence of past or present technology that would, if found, indirectly confirm the presence of life in another star system. Technosignatures could include city lights, solar panels, megastructures and swarms of satellites.

Although there have been similar searches for technosignatures before, this is the first extragalactic search. The radio telescope array in Australia being used is capable of looking for signs of life in star systems both in our Milky Way galaxy and in 2,800 galaxies beyond.

This is not the first time the MWA has been used to look for aliens. In 2020, it was used to conduct the deepest, broadest search for alien technologies ever conducted. That project scanned a patch of sky around the constellation of Vela, an area of the night sky with at least 10 million stars within the Milky Way galaxy. It was studied for 17 hours using low frequencies, but no trace of intelligent life was found.