If we were to try for 100-meter resolution instead, then smaller structures would be distinguishable as artificial in nature. On Earth, these would include all of the aforementioned items, including many more smaller versions of them, as well as canals, major highways - in fact the geometry of such things would start to become visible.
If we want to survey the closest one million G-type star systems for exoplanets with artificial structures 100-meters in size, then we still need to see out to a distance of about 1250 light years. The Sun-Earth L4/L5 Lagrange Points would still provide ample baseline separation for 100-meter resolution at 1250 light years. Again assuming someone invents sensors for optical imaging interferometers. However, the required light bucket increases by three orders of magnitude to 5 billion square km, equivalent to a single aperture about 80,000 km in diameter. For comparison, geostationary orbit around the Earth is 42,164 km in diameter.
100-meter resolution is more likely to succeed in identifying artificial structures on exoplanets compared to 1-km resolution, but there are the same problems in building adequate astronomical facilities:
- the sensor technology hasn't been invented
- we don't have the budget
This is Kardashev Level 2 Technology, and the human species is still basically Earth-bound.
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