The burning of fossil fuels — coal, oil and gas — propelled humanity into the industrial revolution, remaking civilization in its wake. Gasoline powers many of the cars we drive; coal and natural gas are central to global energy. But if aliens were building their own society, would they have to go down the same path as humanity, relying on fossil fuels to build their advanced civilization? Or could they find an alternative?
To build a modern civilization, aliens would likely need to use a source of energy that's just as abundant as fossil fuels, said Lewis Dartnell, an astrobiologist and author of "The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch" (Penguin Press, 2014). It would be hard for them to simply bypass the production of fossil fuels, he noted.
