Using the example of a hypothetical planet the same size as Earth and orbiting a star like our Sun, Kipping and Teachey show how a technologically advanced civilization on this planet could alter the light-curve that other (hypothetical) Keplers would observe.

To escape detection, Kipping and Teachey propose a cloaking method in which residents of this planet could potentially counter-act the dip in the observed light curve by using a system of lasers. That may sound fantastical (and complicated), but it turns out to be more feasible than you would think.

To cancel the light blocked by an Earth-like planet passing in front of a Sun-like star, it would only take a 30 megawatt (MW) laser pointed at us for 10 hours in order to fool Kepler into thinking the planet didn’t exist. Thirty megawatts is roughly equal to what 6,500 American homes use in a year (compared to more than 100 billion homes nationwide). It’s also equivalent to the amount of power the solar arrays of the International Space Station collect in a year. This hypothetical civilization would be well aware of the all the potentially habitable planets nearby that lie close to the ecliptic plane of its star system. Thus, they could easily determine when and where to point their laser.