Whether or not we are alone in the universe is one of the biggest questions of existence, and also one that profoundly interested Sir John Templeton. Philosophical and theological arguments for and against extraterrestrial beings have been debated for two and a half millennia, but only in the last few decades has the search for intelligent life beyond Earth also become a scientific quest. 

In conjunction with the Foundation’s Intelligence Venture, we invite OFIs proposing new searches for evidence of extraterrestrial technology.  While radio telescopes have been a favorite tool in the search for extraterrestrial communication signals, other kinds of technosignatures can be considered. For instance, Templeton Prize laureate Charles Townes suggested looking for extraterrestrial laser pulses. Laureate Freeman Dyson envisioned alien technology capable of large-scale engineering projects, which may produce detectable signatures. Others have asked whether alien technology has entered our solar system, perhaps leaving relics on or near our planet, and possibly affecting our own evolutionary history.

We are interested in novel schemes for detecting signatures that might be found either in exoplanet data or more locally in our solar system. This includes, for example, searches for information embedded in physical or biological substrates using large, publicly available datasets and modern computational techniques. We acknowledge that all such projects would be long shot searches, but also that technological traces could persist over immense timescales and, perhaps, remain detectable today.

Given the scale and ambiguity of relevant data, we expect proposals in this area to make use of advanced AI methods, paired with explicit strategies for managing false positives, evidential standards, and interpretability, and to demonstrate institutional capacity to support such work.