The burning of fossil fuels — coal, oil and gas — propelled humanity into the industrial revolution, remaking civilization in its wake. Gasoline powers many of the cars we drive; coal and natural gas are central to global energy. But if aliens were building their own society, would they have to go down the same path as humanity, relying on fossil fuels to build their advanced civilization? Or could they find an alternative?
To build a modern civilization, aliens would likely need to use a source of energy that's just as abundant as fossil fuels, said Lewis Dartnell, an astrobiologist and author of "The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch" (Penguin Press, 2014). It would be hard for them to simply bypass the production of fossil fuels, he noted.
Dartnell drew a parallel with humans: In the 18th century, the world entered the industrial revolution by tapping into what appeared to be a limitless source of energy. Coal burned longer and produced more power than wood and charcoal.
"Prior to that, energy was the fundamental limitation on how much you could do," he said. "It would limit how much you could mine and move things around, what you could build, and what you could make."
The question of whether humans could have bypassed fossil fuels to reach alternative energy sources is "somewhat of a chicken-and-egg dilemma," Dartnell told Live Science. For instance, producing solar panels requires silicon, and extracting and refining this element demands a significant amount of energy.
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