By Ray Norris, Professor, School of Science, Western Sydney University ESO Can we find alien technology? That is the ambitious goal of the Galileo Project, launched this week by Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb with substantial private financial backing. The project is far from the first attempt to detect signs of civilisations beyond Earth. Loeb has been criticised in the past for his dismissive approach to previous efforts to find extraterrestrial life and his argument that an alien artefact passed through our solar system in 2017. So why do Loeb and his collaborators think they have a chance of finding something where others have failed? There are three triggers that suggest they might.