Might the world’s first verified contact with extraterrestrials not be a greeting signal but a scream of desperation from a dying world? Columbia University’s Dr. David Kipping has proposed what he terms the “Eschatian Hypothesis” and has suggested a new approach to looking for extraterrestrial life based on several centuries of biases evident in astronomy. Kipping argues that historical “firsts” of discovery often involve extreme outliers events so bright or energetic that they shine through as a beacon against a starry background. And so dying civilizations may produce enough of a technological signal that can shine through where a living civilization’s communication signal may not.
It’s a compelling comparison. About a third of the noticeable stars in the sky are evolved giants, although far less than one percent of stars are in this stage of development. Their brilliance deceives us into believing there are more out there than there truly are. Supernovae are a less common phenomenon, happening only about twice a century in a galaxy the size of the Milky Way, yet there are thousands discovered each year because the brightness can equal 10 billion suns. Kipping relates this observation to the concept of extraterrestrial intelligence as our first encounter could be with an intelligent civilization which he terms a ‘loud’ civilization due to their propensity for massive energy outflow into space.
This could manifest in a number of ways. In a doomsday event such as global nuclear war, the sum of the nuclear eruptions could yield a flare of luminosity 10¹⁵ watts, which would be about one percent of the sunlight reflected off of the Earth. This would have its own specific ultraviolet and infrared spectra, which could possibly be detected in preference to a stellar flare using a Hubble or James Webb Space Telescope.
Even after a flare, there could be residuals in the atmosphere such as an increase in nitride oxide or specific radioactive isotopes which could linger in the atmosphere for a number of years, making detection feasible during a planetary transit event.
Other technosignatures related to collapse might be Rapid and uncontrolled climate change. As civilizations progress, their waste heats and emissions tend to diminish as they become more efficient. A mature society could be hard to detect with our telescopes because of our blindness at certain wavelengths or because they operate below our noise floor. A society on the brink of collapse may display unusual patterns of infrared radiation, chemical anomalies, or inexplicable flashes of electromagnetics.
These are exactly the sorts of weird signals that the Vera Rubin Optical Survey can detect as it surveys the sky at a constant rate for things that aren’t following expectations related to flux, spectra, or proper motions.
The Eschatian Hypothesis is also linked to more sophisticated SETI techniques. Whereas the classic searches concentrate upon deliberate transmissions, scientists are beginning to cast their nets wider to investigate accidental or emergency transmissions. For instance, astronomer Nick Tusay’s so-called planet-planet occultation technique looks for “leaking” narrow band radio signals between alien planets transmissions that, being different from natural sources such as quasars and pulsars, are clearly artificial in origin. Next, “signal synchronisation,” a principle advanced by James Davenport, suggests that a message may be timed to occur around the same time as a major astronomical event, such as a supernova, when it receives the most public attention. This dying civilisation could give a boost to their final message by hitching a ride with the brightest beacon in the universe.
However, there is a complication in this detection based on the use of moderate energy by advanced civilizations. According to NASA’s results on technosignatures, even with a population of 30 billion using solar power, only 8.9% of the land on an Earth-like planetary mass may be needed by silicon panels, making it very hard to detect. On the contrary, collapses defy this kind of efficiency and make observable interstellar signals very prominent.
Kipping’s approach is both an agenda for a new methodological direction and also a warning story. Instead of being more generally focussed upon predicted technosignatures, he recommends an “agnostic anomaly detection” strategy to actively sweep with a broad net for all sorts of unusual luminosity or spectral signatures which don’t follow known astrophysical rules. His approach also takes into account the fact that our initial encounter with aliens is most probably not going to follow the most probable courses but might instead be unusual, unstable, and also might involve an unhappy ending.
Even the celebrated “Wow! Signal” of 1977 might possibly turn out to belong to this category, which is no less than a message of an advanced civilization on the brink of their Eschat If history proves true, the voice that may be the first from an alien world could be neither tranquil nor from a planet in its glorious period but from one in its final moment and that moment its moment of brilliance too.
