12 November 2018 - matter resources

The energy scarcity of animals extends to human civilization: We track how much energy we use as a species, not how much matter we use. And we carelessly imagine that any alien civilizations out there are the same, and we may be able to recognize them by their waste heat spectrum. But what if they are short of material instead? If they want more carbon or manganese for some engineering colossus, maybe they will fuse elements on a colossal scale and throw away the surplus energy. The spectrum might be anything. Do you imagine that we can guess what space aliens might be like?