According to scientists, at least seven stars show indications of potentially housing a theoretical, extremely advanced form of extraterrestrial technology known as a Dyson sphere. Although the researchers cannot be completely certain that these stars are home to intelligent civilizations, they will undoubtedly pique the interest of scientists who study the cosmos. Theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson first proposed the concept of a Dyson sphere in 1960. The fundamental premise is that technologically superior alien civilizations could construct vast structures around their home stars to harness the stars’ enormous energy output and propel their civilizations forward. A massive sphere that encompasses the entirety of a star would represent the most extreme form of these megastructures, while lesser versions could include ring stations and clusters of enormous mirrors. Researchers speculate that if Dyson spheres do exist, they would emit large amounts of infrared radiation because the heat from the star they surround would cause them to heat up. Consequently, Dyson sphere-hunters search the spectra of distant stars for spikes in these wavelengths, which are referred to as infrared excess emissions (IEEs). They constitute one of the key technosignatures that astronomers who search for extraterrestrial life consider, along with atmospheric greenhouse gases and artificial light. In a recent study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, researchers employed a computer program to investigate more than 5 million stars in our galaxy for IEE signals. This data was gathered by a variety of observatories, including the Gaia spacecraft of the European Space Agency, NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), and the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS). Remarkably, the program identified seven promising candidates for stars that could be surrounded by a sphere. The seven stars highlighted in the study are all M-dwarf stars, a class of main sequence stars that are smaller and dimmer than our sun. They are also all situated within 1,000 light-years of Earth, according to the study’s authors. Another recent study arrived at comparable results. A similar study that was uploaded to the preprint server arXiv on March 27 also analyzed around 5 million stars surveyed by Gaia, WISE, and 2MASS and discovered 53 potential IEE candidates. However, it is uncertain whether the two studies examined the same data set. The March publication has not yet undergone peer review. In both investigations, researchers took into account factors that could lead to false positive IEE results, such as neighboring stars. However, it is impossible to completely rule out alternative explanations, such as extreme debris disks—large clouds of rock and dust left over from collisions between asteroids that are heated to similar temperatures by their parent stars. Researchers emphasize that the next stage is to do follow-up observations on the newly identified candidate stars using more powerful instruments, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, to obtain more precise readings and look for other signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life in those systems.
Scientists Discover Seven Stars Potentially Hosting Advanced Alien Technology
