Project Halite-Exo: Thermodynamic and Astrobiological Feasibility of TRAPPIST-1e as a Case Study for Regional Computational Technosignature Nodes

ABSTRACT

This proposal introduces a framework for mapping physical compute constraints onto planetary environments, using Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) architecture as a well-characterized physical baseline. This paper does not claim that advanced civilizations use CMOS or any other terrestrial compute paradigm; it uses CMOS as a measurable proxy to define one testable class of computational technosignature environments. Other compute paradigms would define different subclasses within the same framework. The result is a class of environment we term the Ambient Computational Habitability Zone (CHZ): a set of thermodynamic, gravitational, chemical, and acoustic conditions that minimize the overhead cost of housing large-scale computational infrastructure.

We show that Earth-based subsurface geologic formations approximate these conditions locally, a relationship supported by real-world underground data center deployments, and that one possible planetary manifestation of this baseline is an abiotic, tidally locked exoplanet with a nitrogen-argon atmosphere. Leveraging recent transmission spectroscopy from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), including Espinoza et al. (2025) and Glidden et al. (2025), we evaluate TRAPPIST-1e as a nearby observational test case. Current constraints permit a nitrogen-rich secondary atmosphere and are consistent with the proposed hypothesis; they do not confirm it. The pressure, argon fraction, and engineered stability of any such atmosphere are not currently constrained by the available spectra. We further show that TRAPPIST-1's severe stellar contamination problem would provide a structurally advantageous camouflage environment for any low-level or deliberately modulated technosignature. Finally, we provide a concrete, falsifiable observational framework, situating our proposed tests within the context of existing ATA and FAST radio searches and providing a first-order bolometric detectability estimate for the thermal anomaly test.