The Real Reason We Haven't Detected Alien Megastructures

This study uses an 8-meter Habitable Worlds Observatory-class telescope to assess the detectability of large-scale silicon photovoltaic arrays as technosignatures on exoplanets similar to Earth. According to simulations, it would take hundreds of observation hours to achieve a signal-to-noise ratio of five in the UV–VIS region, indicating that even widespread solar panel coverage—up to 23% of land area—suggesting that such features are not consistently detectable by existing technology.