The search for life in the Universe takes many paths. There's SETI, or the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, which is searching for signals from a distant ancient civilization. There's the exploration of our own Solar System, on Mars, or underneath the subsurface oceans of Europa and Enceladus, to see if life can be anywhere there's liquid water and a source of energy. And upcoming space telescopes like James Webb will attempt to directly image the atmospheres of distant extrasolar planets, to see if they contain the distinct chemical signatures of life. But according to Jason Wright, an astronomer at the Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds at Penn State University, we could consider searching for evidence of ancient civilizations right here on Earth, or across the Solar System. Don't get excited, though, so far "there is zero evidence for prior indigenous species in the Solar System." In a paper, recently submitted to the arXiv electronic preprint archive entitled