R
rhodan
Guest
This scientists seems to think so: from NewScientistSpace.com:<ul type="square"><b>Looking for aliens on the Moon</b><br /><br />When astronauts return to the Moon, they should keep their eyes peeled for extraterrestrial artefacts – pieces of technology from alien civilisations that have wound up on the lunar surface either by chance or design. <br /><br />So says Ian Crawford, a researcher from University of London’s Birkbeck College in the UK. He told a SETI specialist meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) in London last week that although he considers such a find a long-shot, it is definitely worth bearing in mind. <br /><br />“This is not a primary reason to go back to the Moon – there are very strong scientific reasons for going back. But if we go back to the Moon in the next 20 or 30 years, then amongst those things we might like to keep our eyes open for are alien artefacts,” Crawford told New Scientist.<br /><br /><b>Little additional cost</b><br /><br />Crawford thinks scientists will be keen for the next lunar astronauts to sift through the lunar soil in greater quantities and in more detail was possible during the Apollo era. So there would be little additional cost to remain open to the idea that alien material may exist within those upper metres of the moon’s regolith.<br /><br />Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, says the possibility of such an interesting payoff for little additional cost makes the idea of looking for artefacts worth considering. <br /><br />"On the Moon, I think it’s certainly worthwhile taking a couple hundred square feet or so of material and looking it over," he says. But SETI researchers "probably wouldn't bet their mortgages on finding anything".<br /><br />...<br /><br />In 2004, an engineer and a physicist published a paper in Nature suggesting that if extraterrestrials were n</ul>