What are the ways we can search for alien life?

[newjerseyrunner]

It would not be a good example.
God is, by nature, beyond science. A being detectable only if and how he chooses is beyond the scope of both scientific analysis and this forum.

I think he was not referring to gods in a religious sense, but more in the sense of a creature so advanced they appear to us as a god. Q from Star Trek for example.

In fact, I don't think you need to even go that far, I would think a species only a thousand years in our future would be able to walk the Earth undetected fairly easily, I would think a creature that evolved has surpassed the technological singularity and entered a post-biological civilization. I see no reason a conscious computer with robot building abilities of 1000 years from now would be in any way distinguishable than the person sitting next to you... How do you know they aren't?

Unfortunately, I think a creatures ability to disguise itself will inherently come out of their progress. They'll probably have to fight wars, misdirection is critical to any war, regardless of species.

 

[Fallen-S36]

Most planets have an atmosphere. Even pluto has one.

 

[mfb]

You are talking about that alien structures thing right ?

Did you read the paper? The authors suggest many possible ideas what could cause this light curve. What do they say about alien structures?

Spoiler

Those are not mentioned at all. Not even with a single word.

This may not work in that case but this was actually a general question whether such an orbit might help us detect more number of exoplanets.

It doesn't help. Take the ideal conditions - an Earth-like planet around Alpha Centauri. The half-shadow of this planet is a cone with an opening angle of 0.0046. We have to be within this cone. Voyager has a viewing angle that differs by 0.0004, that is 1/10 this value. A Kepler-like telescope at the distance of the Voyager probes would increase the change to find that planet by a few percent (I guess 3, but didn't calculate it in detail). At least if we ignore all other issues, like the tiny data transfer rate, the limited lifetime of Kepler (~5 years, we need 40!) and so on. Star #10 ranked by distance is 8 light years away, the additional discovery potential there drops to something like 1.5%, and before we reach star #50 the effect is below 1%.

Compare that with simply launching a second Kepler close to Earth: Kepler watched about 1/400 of the whole sky. A second telescope can watch a different patch, and double the discovery rate (assuming data analysis can keep up with it).
Even better: Send a telescope that can observe more stars than Kepler did. Or, send more than one.

NASA works on TESS, roughly 3 times the number of stars Kepler watched, with a focus on bright stars nearby.
ESA is planning PLATO, it will observe 7 times the number of stars Kepler watched, over a much larger area in the sky so it can focus on brighter (and closer) stars as well.
CHEOS is another ESA spacecraft , with a focus on accurate radius measurements for planets that have been discovered before.