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I'm planning to write a story and I was wondering if it would be possible to find aliens of interplanetary levels of technology at most a dozen light years away.

I know that the first exoplanet was discovered in 1990s so I realize it's possible for humans to find alien worlds but civilization seems a bit much for humanity especially if it's hidden by their star so I was wondering in what year would it be possible for science to find definite proof that they exist.

If it's possible in the first place or would they just be blindsided by the fact that the civilization is their interstellar neighbor and they had no idea.

The aliens would be humanoid who have relatively colonized their solar system and now begun to expand outwards they haven't invented FTL aka faster than light technology yet.

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    $\begingroup$ I’d imagine we would already know if there was a major alien species on a planet 12 light years away. We can already gather extensive data (atmospheric composition, etc.) on star systems that close, and with the James Webb satellite fully deploying this June, we will know a lot more. Of course, all the information Earth would have on them would be 12 years old when gathered, so it would depend when this species arrived there. $\endgroup$
    – Mark Price
    Mar 27, 2022 at 18:21
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    $\begingroup$ If the advanced aliens are actively trying to communicate with us, we already have the technology to receive and detect their signals. If the aliens are not trying to communicate with us, then the answer clearly depends on what you mean by "advanced" aliens. For example, Earth's civilization is basically undetectable at four parsecs distance, unless we purposefully point a powerful radio transmitter (such as a military radar) at the destination and keep dotting and dashing for quite a while. $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    Mar 27, 2022 at 18:36

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1977

wow

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal

Depicted: the Wow! signal. This is a radio signal from space which was detected and recorded but which has not been detected since. These folks were listening for such a signal. If it was from an alien intelligence, maybe they were not talking to us. Or maybe they just have not repeated themselves yet.

Arguably the technology to detect radio signals from space existed decades earlier - the wikipedia article refers to a scholarly paper from 1959 proposing how extraterrestrial civilizations might communicate by radio.

-- One could invent a system by which aliens could communicate (intentionally or not) with preindustrial humans. An apparatus by which these aliens modulate the visible light emissions of their star could be seen by naked eye star watchers on the ancient Earth. How would these aliens reveal to the Babylonians that there was an intelligence behind the flashes of their star? The stuff of high SF to be sure.

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    $\begingroup$ "An apparatus by which these aliens modulate the visible light emissions of their star": Jack McDevitt, The Hercules Text (1986). (They use an artificial pulsar, but close enough.) (I was ready to say that the great thing about this novel is that ..., but then I realized that that would be a massive spoiler. It's a good novel.) $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    Mar 27, 2022 at 18:41
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We already have the technology: radio and visible light telescopes, even gravity wave detectors. What we might not have is luck. Unless the aliens are constantly transmitting any form of signal for a prolonged period we may not we may not detect a short duration temporary signal.

If we did detect something, the observation would need to be verified by numerous observation stations and "experts" over a period of time to confirm the veracity of the initial observation.

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