The search for intelligent extraterrestrial life continues to surprise and fascinate. Astronomers are now analyzing seven potential “Dyson spheres,” hypothetical structures that may have been created by advanced civilizations to capture the energy of stars.
What are Dyson Spheres?
Dyson spheres are technological structures that only a highly advanced civilization could build. Imagine a structure that surrounds an entire star to harness its energy: it is something that our civilization cannot yet achieve, but which would be within the reach of civilizations of Level II on the Kardashev scale. This scale measures the technological development of civilizations, and Level II represents extremely advanced technological prowess.
An international group of researcherscoming from Sweden, India, United Kingdom And United Statesdeveloped a method to search for these spheres of Dyson. Using data from telescopes such as Gaia, 2MASS and WISE, originally launched for other purposes, they analyzed optical and infrared observations to identify potential technosignatures.
According to Matías Suazo, of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Uppsala University in Sweden, they considered around 5 million sources to build a catalog of potential spheres. The goal was to intercept emissions in the mid-infraredproduced by structures heated by the heat of stars.
The challenges of research
The search is not without difficulties. Infrared emissions they can also come from other objects such as circumstellar dust rings, nebulae and distant galaxies, creating false positives. To avoid errors, researchers developed a specific methodology to detect anomalous infrared excesses not attributable to known natural sources.
After rigorous selection, only seven potential Dyson spheres remained out of approximately 5 million initial objects. While there are other explanations for these emissions, such as disks of hot debris around candidate stars, the stars examined appear to be M-type stars (red dwarfs), which rarely feature such disks.
What’s the next step?
To further confirm these findings, additional research will be needed. More detailed analyzes of emissions, such as those of H-alpha, could help to better understand the characteristics of stars and confirm or discard the Dyson sphere hypothesis.
What do you think? Are Dyson Spheres a real possibility or just a sci-fi dream? Share your opinion in the comments!
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