Projections of Earth's Technosphere: Strategies for Observing Technosignatures on Terrestrial Exoplanets

Abstract

The search for technosignatures--remotely detectable evidence of extraterrestrial technology--draws upon examples from the recent history of Earth as well as projections of Earth's technosphere. Facilities like the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will significantly advance the feasibility of characterizing the atmospheres of habitable exoplanets at visible and near-infrared wavelengths, while other future mission concepts could extend this search to mid-infrared wavelengths. We draw upon a recently developed set of 10 self-consistent scenarios for future Earth technospheres as analogs for extraterrestrial technospheres, which we use to outline a stepwise technosignature search strategy, beginning with HWO and followed by other missions. We find that HWO could reveal elevated abundances of a CO$_2$ + NO$_2$ pair on planets with combustion and other large-scale industry, which could be observable in up to eight of the 10 scenarios. Follow-up radio observations could reveal narrowband directed transmissions, as occur in two of the scenarios. Further study involving direct detections at mid-infrared wavelengths with the Large Interferometer for Exoplanets could reveal spectral features from industry, such as the combinations of CO$_2$ + CFC-11/12 in four scenarios and CO$_2$ + CFC-11/12 + CF$_4$ in one scenario; two of these also include the N$_2$O + CH$_4$ + NH$_3$ triple from large-scale agriculture. Other mission concepts, such as a solar-gravitational-lens mission, could reveal large-scale surface features in two scenarios that would otherwise show no detectable technosignatures, while an interplanetary flyby or probe mission would be the most conclusive way to reveal the presence of technology on terrestrial exoplanets.