At this very moment, the long-anticipated James Webb Telescope (JWST) is situated a million miles from Earth, preparing its mirrors and instrumentation for this summer when its observations will finally begin. When it does kick off observation, scientists say that the uniquely powerful space telescope will have an unparalleled ability to observe distant solar systems and their exoplanets — probing their atmospheres for likely signs of life, such as water, oxygen or methane.
Now, some scientists are considering the proposition that JWST could be tuned to observe something like atmospheric pollution in an alien civilization's sky. Indeed, given that certain pollutant molecules have no known natural origins, the notion of using the telescope to search for such "technosignatures" — as opposed to biosignatures — is intriguing.
