Possible Photometric Signatures of Moderately Advanced Civilizations: The Clarke Exobelt

Socas-Navarro, H.
Bibliographical reference

The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 855, Issue 2, article id. 110, 7 pp. (2018).

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2018
Number of authors
1
IAC number of authors
1
Citations
16
Refereed citations
14
Description
This paper puts forward a possible new indicator of the presence of moderately advanced civilizations on transiting exoplanets. The idea is to examine the region of space around a planet where potential geostationary or geosynchronous satellites would orbit (hereafter, the Clarke exobelt). Civilizations with a high density of devices and/or space junk in that region, but otherwise similar to ours in terms of space technology (our working definition of “moderately advanced”), may leave a noticeable imprint on the light curve of the parent star. The main contribution to such a signature comes from the exobelt edge, where its opacity is maximum due to geometrical projection. Numerical simulations have been conducted for a variety of possible scenarios. In some cases, a Clarke exobelt with a fractional face-on opacity of ∼10‑4 would be easily observable with existing instrumentation. Simulations of Clarke exobelts and natural rings are used to quantify how they can be distinguished by their light curves.
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