Seven different stars in our galaxy may show signs of being contained within Dyson spheres, megastructures that could be constructed by advanced civilizations to harness radiation energy from stars, new research has found.
These stars are all low-mass M dwarf stars—much smaller than our sun—and are all within 1,000 light-years of our planet, according to a new paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The light from these stars showed a strange spike in infrared wavelengths known as infrared excess emissions (IEEs), which researchers associate with the potential existence of such alien mega-structures.
"After analyzing the optical/NIR/MIR photometry of [around 5 million] sources, we found seven apparent M dwarfs exhibiting an infrared excess of unclear nature that is compatible with our [Dyson sphere] model," the researchers wrote in the paper.
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