In this episode of the Physics World Stories podcast astronomers discuss the search for signs of extraterrestrial technologies. Fingerprints might include traces of pollution in exoplanet atmospheres, lights on the night sides of planets, and even the waste heat from megastructures such as Dyson spheres.

Podcast host Andrew Glester meets the following guests:

• Jacob Haqq Misra, senior research investigator at Blue Marble Space Institute of Science;
• Thomas Beatty, an astronomer at the University of Arizona who is also part of the team for the NIRCam instrument on James Web Space Telescope – scheduled to launch in December;
• Amedeo Balbi, an asrophysicist at the Tor Vergata University of Rome.

Find out more by reading ‘Scanning the cosmos for signs of technology,’ a feature article by science writer David Appell, originally published in the December issue of Physics World.