Dyson Spheres

StarDate

If you’re a super-advanced civilization and you’re running out of energy, there’s a simple solution: Dismantle part of your planetary system to build “megastructures” around your star. Known as Dyson Spheres, they’d gather most of the star’s energy, giving you an almost limitless supply.

A recent study has found possible evidence of them. Most or all of the candidate objects are likely to have a natural origin: distant galaxies, or clouds of debris around a star. But astronomers are following up just in case.

The “spheres” wouldn’t completely surround a star. Instead, they’d consist of many huge panels in separate orbits around the star. They’d emit heat, so they’d glow in the infrared. So astronomers have been looking for the right kind of infrared glow for years.

In the recent study, a team scoured observations of about five million stars within a thousand light-years of Earth. They used many filters to narrow the list. And they came up with seven candidates. All of them are red dwarfs – stars that are much smaller, cooler, and fainter than the Sun. Such stars live a long time – long enough for a civilization to develop and grow – and surround the star with a Dyson Sphere.

Two of the candidate stars are near the “head” of one of the fish of Pisces. The figure is low in the east at nightfall, to the left of the bright planet Saturn. The candidates are much too faint to see without a telescope.

Script by Damond Benningfield