By Lewis Page • Get more from this author
Posted in Space, 29th December 2011 12:49 GMT
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Space boffins have come up with a plan which strikes a deeply resonant chord with us here on the Register lunar desk. The scientists advocate the settting up of a distributed volunteer effort to trawl for signs of alien visits through the vast databases of lunar imagery being accumulated by NASA’s space probe now circling the moon, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).
The LRO is an old friend here at the Reg: it has made many excellent discoveries on the lunar surface in recent times, including the finding of such things as a multimillionaire game developer’s lost electric buggy, a two-lane bridge, and hidden subterraneanselenean tunnel complexes (see “Related Stories” below for details).
Thus it is clear that the LRO, sweeping along in a very low orbit (this is possible due to the lack of any atmosphere) and so getting excellent hi-res pics, could surely detect signs of any activity by aliens on the lunar surface. The Moon is a particularly good place to look, as the chances are that any visit by star-travelling aliens or their machinery – assuming the laws of physics as they are currently understood to be inviolate on such matters as faster-than-light travel – would most likely have taken place a very long time ago.