Astronomers have identified seven star systems in our galaxy that could potentially host a Dyson sphere — a hypothetical megastructure an alien civilization could build around a star or black hole to capture most of its power in the form of radiation.
The concept, first proposed by theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson in 1960, could take on a number of different shapes, from giant cage structures to ring shells to constellations of mirrors.
Of course, it's an entirely theoretical idea. After all, we haven't even discovered the existence of extraterrestrial life, let alone an intelligent alien civilization.
But scientists do suspect it's still possible — and tantalizingly, if these megastructures do exist, they should be visible to us due to the tremendous amount of infrared radiation being released by such a structure as the star heats it up.
In a recent study published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a team of researchers created a computer program to hunt for "infrared excess emissions" (IEEs) in our galaxy.
They created a list of seven strong candidates that may be hosting Dyson spheres by analyzing observations from the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite an, as well as more infrared survey results from other ground- and space-based telescopes.
The seven candidates are all M-dwarf stars, meaning they're both smaller and dimmer than our Sun.
The researchers, however, stopped well short of claiming these extremely heated dwarf stars are definitely surrounded by Dyson spheres — instead, they emphasized, they're just candidates.
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