Scientists Detect Possible Dyson Sphere or Swarm in Space, New Study Finds

In the early 1960s, the American theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson expressed an opinion about how to find, in his opinion, alien civilizations – through an artificial megastructure. The scientist proposed that highly developed beings, who really need a lot of energy, would solve this problem with the help of a special astro-engineering structure, which got its name a little later. “dyson sphere”. We were talking about a spherical shell built around the parent star, with a radius similar to the radii of the planet’s orbits.

If such megastructures exist in space, they can be detected by the excess infrared radiation coming from the artificial shell of the star heated from the inside. In other words, a sign of a Dyson sphere will be a source of infrared radiation with an unusual spectrum.

Two teams of scientists from Sweden and Italy, led by astronomers Matias Suazo from Uppsala University and Gaby Contardo from the Italian School of International Advanced Studies, have joined forces to try to detect signs of to discover a hypothetical Dyson field in space. To do this, scientists analyzed a large package of publicly available data about millions of stars, already collected by space telescopes (Gaia and WISE) and ground-based (2MASS ) during large-scale astronomical surveys in the infrared.

Each group worked with the same list of stars, which contained five million luminaries. In both cases, scientists found objects with signs of infrared radiation that cannot be explained by known natural processes. In total – 60 stores. The results of the work published In the journal Royal Astronomical Society.

Astronomers from the Suazo team discovered seven red dwarfs within a radius of 900 light-years from Earth, which, although smaller and smaller than our Sun, “glow” in the infrared range 60 times brighter than they should be according to scientists’ calculations. Contardo’s group found 53 sources, among which are sun-like stars located from our planet at a distance of up to 6.5 thousand light years.

According to the authors of the work, the excess infrared radiation appears to come from hot material that obscures the star by 16 percent or more. The temperature of this structure should reach 400 degrees Celsius, which could be compatible with Dyson’s sphere.

The researchers suggested that such an object is not a solid structure, but a collection of large satellites orbiting a star to collect energy, called “dyson swarm”. The orbits of these devices are compatible with each other, because they create a very dense field, but it is not continuous.

Roy Dyson as imagined by the artist / © Vedexent via Wikimedia Commons

True, Suazo and Contardo did not rule out that the strange behavior of sources, which seem to mimic the properties of a Dyson field, could be caused by natural processes. For example, a hot protoplanetary disk. However, most of the stars that scientists have discovered are too old for planets to form around them.

Another explanation: Each of the 60 stars could have ended up accidentally in front of a distant galaxy emitting powerful infrared radiation. Another hypothesis is that the excess infrared radiation is likely the result of an unknown natural phenomenon, perhaps even the collision of two planets.

In any case, to confirm the hypothesis of Swedish and Italian astronomers, additional spectroscopic studies are needed, which could be done by the James Webb space telescope. ​​​​​​A flight observatory would help reveal whether this excess infrared radiation comes from naturally occurring dust material or from something else – perhaps a man-made megastructure.

Note that the very idea of ​​a Dyson field as one whole (and not a collection of satellites) can hardly be brought to life. Calculations by scientists have shown that such a structure does not fall under the influence of the star’s gravity and must be accelerated to an orbital speed of 20 to 30 kilometers per second. If at the equator the star’s gravity can be compensated by centrifugal force, at the poles the speed will be so small – which means that the universe will collapse anyway.

Another problem with the Dyson sphere concept is energy. It is only reasonable to build it if civilization’s energy consumption is much higher than what nuclear energy can provide, because reactors on the surface of the planet are cheaper than structures in space. This level of consumption is at least thousands of times higher than the needs of today’s earthly civilization. It is not entirely obvious that after reaching such a high level of development, civilization will not be outside the mastery of thermonuclear fusion, which is in any case simpler and more practical than the construction of megastructures in space.