(10-22-2015, 04:55 PM)stevebowers Wrote: As far as alien megastructures and life-signs are concerned, we mustn't forget that they would be alien, so need not conform to any of our preconceptions. An unconstrained factor like alien life and alien civilisation will lead to many possible false positive detections, as well as many possibilities for false negatives as well.
In fact, the idea of megastructures sounds 20th century to me. Perhaps very advanced alien civilization don't _need_ megastructures because they have long ago transitioned to upload civilizations that can thrive in small computational nodes with a limited footprint. Also, perhaps they would use smarter communication means than radio waves.
Having said that, I hope to be proven wrong by the detection of a signal from megastructure builders around KIC 8462852.