Could Alien Megastructures Be Real? Seven Stars Show Signs of Advanced Civilizations in Our Galaxy
TL;DR
Astronomers have discovered seven red dwarf stars within 1,000 light-years that exhibit unusual infrared emissions, possibly pointing to advanced alien megastructures like Dyson Spheres. Using data from 2MASS, WISE, and Gaia, they eliminated alternative explanations like debris. The next phase will involve analyzing these stars with the James Webb Space Telescope to search for biosignatures and further evidence of alien technology. If these structures exist, they could revolutionize our understanding of how advanced civilizations harness energy from stars.
“I was actually reading the scientific paper earlier today when I heard a civilian volunteering to help go through data found it. What makes it more interesting is the fact they are stating there is no error currently in the data, and in fact are finding something causing this phenomenon. Really cool news of the week, even if it doesn’t turn out to be Aliens.” What do you think about these findings?
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One of the major barriers we face is the inability to efficiently harness and utilize sufficient energy. Shifting from a planet-bound civilization to one that is interplanetary or even interstellar requires an enormous amount of power. Some theories suggest that a technological civilization’s advancement could be gauged by the proportion of energy it captures from its home star.
More advanced alien civilizations might harvest significantly more energy from their star, or any star they encounter, by constructing vast megastructures around it. Picture a network of orbital solar panels absorbing starlight and converting it into electricity, and you have the basic idea. Freeman Dyson first proposed this concept in 1960, and these hypothetical alien megastructures have since been known as Dyson Spheres.
Dyson Spheres and Other Alien Megastructures
Alien engineers could design these energy-harvesting structures in various forms. At the lowest level, we have our current, relatively inefficient solar energy collection using early-stage solar cells. Our most efficient solar panels capture only a small percentage of sunlight, and we don’t have enough of them. Aside from certain spacecraft, we only collect sunlight that reaches our planet, and even then, it’s not much. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the Dyson Sphere, a hypothetical structure that completely surrounds a star, capturing all of its energy output.
A bit lower on the scale, around a 7 or 8, are Dyson Rings or Dyson Swarms, which could capture around 20% to 30% of a star’s energy without entirely blocking it. If any civilization out there has built such energy-gathering megastructures, we might detect them, giving astronomers a potential target in the search for alien life.
No solar cell or energy-harvesting device can be 100% efficient. Some of the starlight hitting these structures would be converted to heat instead of energy. Even if a star were fully enclosed by a Dyson Sphere, we could still detect it through its infrared radiation. A star surrounded by rings or a swarm might display strange dimming patterns, along with an unusual infrared signature. So, if such megastructures exist, we might be able to find them.
Astronomers Identify 7 Stars as Potential Alien Megastructure Hosts
In a study in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, astronomers searched for infrared excess emissions (IEEs) from around 5 million stars in the Milky Way, using data from the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS), NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), and ESA’s Gaia mission.
For each IEE they found, scientists tried to explain it through known phenomena. For example, a star surrounded by debris, such as the remnants of planet formation, could produce similar signals. After ruling out all other explanations, they were left with seven potential candidates, all of which are red dwarf stars located within 1,000 light-years from Earth.
Though these infrared signatures could have more ordinary explanations, they provide a starting point in the search for alien technology and the civilizations that might have built it. The next steps involve studying these stars using more advanced tools, like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and searching for other biosignatures such as atmospheric carbon, oxygen, or molecules that are only produced by life. If Harry and his alien friends are out there, we are doing our best to find them.
If we thought it up, they already have.., and even perfected it beyond our current understanding now. We are not original