Searching For Intelligent ETs

A new study looking at determining which stars are most likely to harbor intelligent aliens concludes the best candidates are stars that closely resemble the Sun.

The money spent on the study probably could have been better spent elsewhere. Many research papers, television documentaries, and science books over three or four decades have asked the same question and come to the same conclusion. The reason is pretty basic. If you start out with a definition of life based on what we know about what's necessary for Earth life, and you narrow that to focus on the development of intelligence, the only model we have is what we think happened on Earth-- and why high level intelligence arose here is still something of a mystery-- you are actually replaying Earth history. Of course, Earth revolves around the Sun, so you're likely to conclude intelligent life is most likely to rise on planets circling Sun-like stars. There's a circularity not only to the orbits, but also to the logic.

The conclusion could still be correct, of course, especially if intelligence on the human level or beyond is rare in the cosmos, but a more interesting question may be: Where should we look for alien civilizations? If an extremely advanced technological civilization planned in terms of millions of years, it might well colonize the systems of small, extremely stable red dwarf stars-- the most numerous stars in the galaxy-- even if the species originated in the system of a Sun-like star. Under that theory, red dwarfs should be carefully examined.