Scientists are able to observe these planets from vast distances. You would think with technological capability like this that we would also be able to detect if planets in these zones possess life on them. Trying to understand how or why this is the case.
In: Planetary Science
To understand – when we ‘see’ distant planets it’s like being able to look out your window in New York City and see that someone in LA lowered their window shade by 1 foot. Its less that we’re getting high clarity photos of the snowstorms on P3R-118, it’s that we’re seeing tiny changes in the brightness of stars which we’re able to analyze and determine it’s because a planet has passed in front of the star, making it appear dimmer. We’re getting better, but that’s the gist.
What we can do is detect the chemicals present in the atmosphere of some of these planets and those *could* tell us about life, intelligent or otherwise.
For example, any alien looking at Earth from P2C-257 would instantly know there was tons of life on Earth because of the methane. Methane should naturally decay to reach a balance in the atmosphere and earth was WAYYYYYY to much methane so something must be constantly pushing it out 24/7 that is biological, in this case it’s cow farts. Of course cows aren’t “intelligent” in the way you’re hoping for so who knows what we’ll see and learn, but if we saw a planet with Earth level methane we’d be pretty sure we had found some form of extraterrestrial life.
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