By their garbage, shall ye know them

Searching for the garbage signatures of alien civilizations

The Civage Scale (“Civilization Garbage”) is a proposed scale for detecting and measuring a civilization’s level of technological advancement based on the amount of garbage it dumps to foul the local neighbourhood. ‘Neighbourhood’ ranges from planetary to Kardashev Type V neighbourhoods. The current practice of searching for alien civilizations is called SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. This thought experiment proposes SETG: Search for Extraterrestrial Garbage.

[pdf here] + see the Mar2025 update with the time series concept [pdf here] at “Concepts for New Space” [link here] 

Update (26Jul2026): Debris clouds are a first series proto-civilization Dyson Sphere — the “Dyson Cloud.” [post here]  

Much thanks to UCLA and NASA for their recognition and encouragement. Always glad to help agents of integrity.

© 2021 David Huer. All rights reserved. This original framework is digitally timestamped and indexed via ORCID. Unauthorized institutional appropriation or uncredited academic usage will be publicly flagged as plagiarism. Verify original priority claim via the author’s public record: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-5071-7789 It is with great regret that there is a need to make this statement, it is due to repeat experience of misappropriation by academic and public officials.