One of the world's largest lasers could be used to detect alien warp drives

The world's largest observatory could be used to look for ripples in space-time left in the wake of alien spaceships.

Waves are created when objects are moving through space. There are bigger objects that produce more prominent waves. Scientists have been getting better at spotting space-time ripples since they were first detected in 2015.

New calculations published in the preprint database arXiv suggest thatLIGO can look beyond conventional sources for space-time ripples. The authors said that alien spaceships that traveled at high speeds or were pushed along by warp drives produced telltale vibrations.

A space telescope could be used to find alien worlds.

The small distortions they make in space-time are detected by the LIGO detector. The experiment is made up of two intersecting L-shaped detectors, each with two 2.48-mile-long arms and two identical laser beams inside. LIGO is incredibly sensitive and requires strict maintenance and calibration because of the small warpings of space-time that it makes.

Scientists were able to see how far this sensitivity could be stretched by making calculations of the smallest object that would generate waves on Earth. To be detected by LIGO, an alien mothership would need to weigh roughly the same as Jupiter and travel at one-tenth the speed of light.

Is it possible for spaceships of this size and speed? As the European Space Agency's 2037 Laser Interferometer Space Antenna is deployed, they hope to squeeze down the ship size to more reasonable proportions. If alien waves were to be detected, they could provide humans with clues about how to reverse engineer the technology.

The shape of the signal is dependent on the trajectory of the object. As a burst signal is detected, one can attempt to reason the qualities of the transportation mechanism present based on the shape of theGW signal.

The original article was published on Live Science.