&gt;I&#x27;m personally doubtful we could detect our own civilization today if we had a clone of humanity orbiting Alpha Centauri, and that&#x27;s still well within our RF light cone.<p>This interests me. Could we launch a sufficiently weak sensor(I&#x27;d suggest my first-gen Moto G) into far solar orbit and try and perform the same kind of analysis we perform on extra-solar objects? Wouldn&#x27;t it be useful to have a platform where we can perform control experiments?