Alien megastructures – where we should look next

Huge extraterrestrial construction projects should leave detectable traces that astronomers could see

You remember the alien megastructure. No? Let me refresh your memory. Back in October 2015, the internet nearly broke when astronomers announced they had detected a strange signal that stood a remote chance of being a vast extraterrestrial construction - dubbed the alien megastructure.

It was discovered using Nasa's Kepler Space Telescope, which was designed to look for the slight drop in light caused when a planet passes in front of its star. In this case, the telescope gave astronomers much more than they bargained for.