There\u2019s something poetic about humanity\u2019s attempt to detect other civilizations somewhere in the Milky Way\u2019s expanse. There\u2019s also something futile about it. But we\u2019re not going to stop. There\u2019s little doubt about that. <\/p>\n
One group of scientists thinks that we may already have detected technosignatures from a technological civilization\u2019s Dyson Spheres, but the detection is hidden in our vast troves of astronomical data. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n A Dyson Sphere is a hypothetical engineering project that only highly advanced civilizations could build. In this sense, \u2018advance\u2019 means the kind of almost unimaginable technological prowess that would allow a civilization to build a structure around an entire star. These Dyson Spheres would allow a civilization to harness all of a star\u2019s energy. <\/p>\n A Civilization could only build something so massive and complex if they had reached Level II in the Kardashev Scale. Dyson Spheres could be a technosignature, and a team of researchers from Sweden, India, the UK, and the USA developed a way to search for Dyson Sphere technosignatures they\u2019re calling Project Hephaistos. (Hephaistos was the Greek god of fire and metallurgy.) <\/p>\n They\u2019re publishing their results in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Academy of Sciences. The research is titled \u201cProject Hephaistos \u2013 II. Dyson sphere candidates from Gaia DR3, 2MASS, and WISE.\u201d The lead author is Mat\u00edas Suazo, a PhD student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Uppsala University in Sweden. This is the second paper presenting Project Hephaistos. The first one is here. <\/p>\n \u201cIn this study, we present a comprehensive search for partial Dyson spheres by analyzing optical and Combing through all of that data is an arduous task. In this work, the team of researchers developed a special data pipeline to work its way through the combined data of all three surveys. They point out that they\u2019re searching for partially-completed spheres, which would emit excess infrared radiation. \u201cThis structure would emit waste heat in the form of mid-infrared radiation that, in addition to the level of completion of the structure, would depend on its effective temperature,\u201d Suazo and his colleagues write.<\/p>\n The problem is, they\u2019re not the only objects to do so. Many natural objects do, too, like circumstellar dust rings and nebulae. Background galaxies can also emit excess infrared radiation and create false positives. It\u2019s the pipeline\u2019s job to filter them out. \u201cA specialized pipeline has been developed to identify potential Dyson sphere candidates focusing on detecting sources that display anomalous infrared excesses that cannot be attributed to any known natural source of such radiation,\u201d the researchers explain. <\/p>\n This flowchart shows what the pipeline looks like.<\/p>\n The pipeline is just the first step. The team subjects the list of candidates to further scrutiny based on factors like H-alpha emissions, optical variability, and astrometry. <\/p>\n 368 sources survived the last cut. Of those, 328 were rejected as blends, 29 were rejected as irregulars, and 4 were rejected as nebulars. That left only 7 potential Dyson Spheres out of about 5 million initial objects, and the researchers are confident that those 7 are legitimate. \u201cAll sources are clear mid-infrared emitters with no clear contaminators or signatures that indicate an obvious mid-infrared origin,\u201d they explain.<\/p>\n These are the seven strongest candidates, but the researchers know they\u2019re still just candidates. There could be other reasons why the seven are emitting excess infrared. \u201cThe presence of warm debris disks surrounding our candidates remains a plausible explanation for the infrared excess of our sources,\u201d they explain.<\/p>\n But their candidates seem to be M-type (red dwarf) stars, and debris disks around M-dwarfs are very rare. However, it gets complicated because some research suggests that debris disks around M-dwarfs form differently and present differently. One type of debris disk called Extreme Debris Disks (EDD) can explain some of the luminosity the team sees around their candidates. \u201cBut these sources have never been observed in connection with M dwarfs,\u201d Suazo and his co-authors write.<\/p>\n That leaves the team with three questions: \u201cAre our candidates strange young stars whose flux does not vary with time? Are these stars\u2019 M-dwarf debris disks with an extreme fractional luminosity? Or something completely different?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAfter analyzing the optical\/NIR\/MIR photometry of ~5 x 106<\/sup> sources, we found 7 apparent M dwarfs exhibiting an infrared excess of unclear nature that is compatible with our Dyson sphere models,\u201d the researchers write in their conclusion. There are natural explanations for the excess infrared coming from these 7, \u201cBut none of them clearly explains such a phenomenon in the candidates, especially given that all are M dwarfs.\u201d<\/p>\n The researchers say that follow-up optical spectroscopy would help understand these 7 sources better. A better understanding of the H-alpha emissions is especially valuable since they can also come from young disks. \u201cIn particular, analyzing the spectral region around H-alpha can help us ultimately discard or verify the presence of young disks,\u201d the researchers write. <\/p>\n \u201cAdditional analyses are definitely necessary to unveil the true nature of these sources,\u201d they conclude. <\/p>\n
infrared observations from Gaia, 2MASS, and WISE,\u201d the authors write. These are large-scale astronomical surveys designed for different purposes. Each one of them generated an enormous amount of data from individual stars. \u201cThis second paper examines the Gaia DR3, 2MASS, and WISE photometry of ~5 million sources to build a catalogue of potential Dyson spheres,\u201d they explain.<\/p>\n![\"This](\"https:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Dyson-Sphere-Pipeline.png\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Dyson-Sphere-pie-chart.png\")
![\"This](\"https:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Dyson-Sphere-Plot.png\")
Like this:<\/h3>\n