Scientists identify seven star systems that could host extraterrestrial megastructures

Dyson Near

Astronomers have identified seven star systems in our galaxy that could potentially host a Dyson sphere – a hypothetical megastructure that an alien civilization could build around a star or black hole to capture most of its power in form of radiation.

The concept, first proposed by theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson in 1960, could take many different forms, from giant cage structures to ring-shaped shells to mirror constellations.

Of course, this is an entirely theoretical idea. After all, we haven't even discovered the existence of extraterrestrial life, much less an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization.

But scientists suspect that this is still possible – and, tantalizingly, if these megastructures exist, they should be visible to us due to the enormous amount of infrared radiation emitted by such a structure when the star heats it.

Seven Dwarves

In a recent study published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Societya team of researchers created a computer program to search for “excessive infrared emissions” (IEE) in our galaxy.

They created a list of seven strong candidates likely to host Dyson spheres by analyzing observations from the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite, as well as other infrared survey results from other ground-based and telescopes. 'space.

All seven candidates are M dwarf stars, meaning they are both smaller and dimmer than our Sun.

Researchers, however, have stopped short of claiming that these extremely heated dwarf stars are certainly surrounded by Dyson spheres – instead, they pointed out, they are just candidates.

“There are several natural explanations for excess infrared in the literature, but none of them clearly explains such a phenomenon in candidates, especially since all of them are M dwarfs,” the researchers wrote .

For example, “it could be something that happens very rarely, like two planets collide and produce a huge amount of matter,” as David Hogg, co-author and professor of physics at the University of New York. New scientist. “I think it’s probably a natural phenomenon.”

In their paper, the team admitted that it was “definitely premature to presume” that the infrared readings came from at least “partial Dyson spheres.”

At the same time, they are not ready to rule them out just yet, which could be possible with the help of NASA's extremely sensitive James Webb Space Telescope.

“Either we'll rule them all out and say that Dyson spheres are quite rare and very hard to find, or they'll remain candidates and we'll study them thoroughly,” said Jason, co-author and professor of astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania. Wright said New scientist.

Learn more about Dyson Spheres: Building a Dyson sphere around the Sun would be easy if we used Jupiter as raw material