Moon best place to find alien footprints: Scientists

The Moon may be the best place to look for aliens as their footprints on its surface would last far longer than radio signals, scientists have suggested.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, project looks for alien life in a one, main specific way by scanning for radio signals deliberately beamed towards earth from distant stars. But, astronomers at Arizona State University suggested that we may be missing evidence much closer to home -- the Moon, the Daily Mail reported.

They believe that alien life may have "left traces on the moon in the form of an artifact or surface modification of lunar features", and that alien "footprints" on the moon would last far longer than radio signals.
"Evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence could come from any signatures of non-human technology," they wrote in a paper published in 'Acta Astronautica' journal.

According to them, any alien mission to our solar system is liable to have occurred long ago -- but that the surface of the moon could preserve the signs for millions of years.The images captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter of NASA, which is currently mapping the moon's surface to 0.5m resolution, provide an easy and cheap way to look for these signs, they explained.

"Although there is only a tiny probability that alien technology would have left traces on the moon in the form of an artifact or surface modification of lunar features, it has the virtue of being close, and of preserving traces for an immense duration," they wrote.

"The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) would have a high impact if successful. Therefore, it makes sense to widen the search as much as possible. To date, SETI has been dominated by seeking deliberately beamed radio messages."