Finding Dyson's Sphere is a more realistic option than hearing alien radio
A team of astronomers has begun to search for Dyson Spheres - large-scale solar power plants of stellar scale, which, according to the hopes of researchers, are used by developed alien civilizations.
Pictured: Part of the NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer ( WISE ) review, visible in the infrared spectrum.
Back in 1960, a mathematician, physicist, and in many ways an ingenious specialist, Freeman Dyson predicted that every civilization in the Universe would sooner or later exhaust all the energy reserves of its home planet, provided that it survives a sufficient amount of time. Dyson argued that this event is one of the main obstacles in the evolution of any civilization, and the way to overcome it is the same for everyone: building huge collectors of solar energy, in other words, the shell around their “native” star is an extensive solar power station. So, the astronomers decided to call this theoretical superstructure the “Dyson Sphere”. Dyson’s reflections may look like nothing more than a thought experiment, but if his hypothesis proved to be true, then it can have amazing consequences: if you want to find advanced alien civilizations, you should look at the signs of the existence of the Dyson Sphere.
Last month, a trio of astronomers headed by Jason Wrigth from Penn State University began a two-year search for Dyson's Sphere, a study that will affect not only the Milky Way, but also millions of other galaxies. Their project was recently awarded a large award from the Temlpeton Foundation, a charitable organization that seeks research that aims to answer the "big questions" facing humanity: questions relating to "the purpose of man and / or to the final idea of ​​reality ".
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So, how does Wright and his team intend to find the Dyson Sphere? Reflecting on the "sphere", we mechanically imagine its integral structure, but Wright said that his team does not intend to search for an integral shell. “Even if we imagine that there is enough mass in our solar system to build a solid sphere, such a structure will be mechanically impossible,” said Wright. "Most likely, it will look like a moving cluster (swarm) of solar energy collectors."
Such a bold assumption about the future of the fantastic alien technology may look a bit unscientific, but the search for extraterrestrial civilizations is always based on similar, too naive, and maybe even a little faddish ideas. Suffice it to recall the SETI project (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - eng. Search for Extraterrestrial Mind), which hopes to find confirmation of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations by constantly monitoring the starry sky for a sign of the presence of an alien radio signal. At present, people have not come close to the amount of energy that is required for such a radio signal that SETI listened to with bated breath. Earlier this year, astronomer Robert Gray told me that in order to provide a radio beacon, capable of broadcasting a radio signal without stopping in all directions, with the power needed to be caught in a few light years from us, energy would be required from thousands at the same time working large high-power power plants. SETI relies on the fact that developed civilizations will value communicating with others so much that it even justifies such a serious expenditure of energy. He also hopes that such civilizations communicate using radio waves, and they use precisely those frequencies that we observe. For us, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is not just a search for something living on a distant planet, it is a search for a civilization that develops and uses technology in a predictable way.
Compared to SETI, the search aimed at the Dyson Spheres is more modest in its expectations about the goals of developed alien civilizations. In fact, most of his assumptions were based directly on elementary biology. As Wright, the project manager, explained to me, “Life, by definition, uses energy, which then in turn re-emits as heat.” The more civilization, the more energy it consumes, and the more heat it radiates. Life is also (by definition) reproduced, which provides for the possibility of exponentially growing energy needs. And if it is not stopped, then this growth will ultimately be limited by the available energy on the planet. This will leave a growing civilization no choice but to extract energy from other planets, and ultimately from stars.
Take Earth as an example. As Oliver Morton noted in his beautiful metaphor: approximately 120,000 terawatts of energy fall daily to earth. This is 10,000 times more than what is used by our industrial civilization. This is really a lot of energy, but we have to remember that our civilization is quite young, and it is growing really fast. In just some 30 years, we have doubled the energy consumption. If this trend continues, then in 400 years we will use as much energy as the sun gives to our planet. And maybe this will be the very time when we will plan the construction of the Dyson Sphere.
It is reasonable to assume that a developed alien civilization may be exponentially more energy-intensive, especially considering that its industrial revolution and the irreversible growth of energy needs began, perhaps billions of years ago. Dyson spheres can be one of the oldest and most successful phenomena in the open spaces of our universe.
An anonymous concept of the possible structure of the “swarm” of the Dyson Sphere. (Wikimedia Commons)
The idea of ​​the Dyson Sphere also intersects with another theory of the development of civilization: “The Kardashev scale”. In 1964, the Soviet astronomer, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nikolai Kardashev, tried to build a theory of scientific and technological progress based on increasing the energy sources of civilization over time. According to the Kardashev Scale, I type of civilization will use all the energy available on the planet, type II - all the energy of their nearest star, and type III will capture all the energy of their galaxy. The search for Dyson Spheres is essentially a search for type II civilizations. And since it is based only on the ability of civilizations to produce energy, this becomes another indisputable advantage over SETI: it allows you to find an alien mind that is not necessarily interested in communicating with us.
And according to this, if Dyson's Spheres really exist somewhere, they “promise” to emit a special kind of heat trails, traces that we can see with our infrared telescopes. Solar energy will heat the Dyson Sphere as the computer heats up due to the electricity flowing inside it. Heat will be abundantly emitted from the sphere in the form of light in the mid-infrared region of the spectrum.
A civilization that built the Dyson Sphere would have to take many measures to avoid detection: either to get rid of the radiated heat in some new way, or by creating massive radiators that would release the excess heat so much that it would cool the sphere to it can be lost in the cosmic microwave background - a weak residual luminescence from the Big Bang. Wright also noted that the implementation of the latter would make the sphere a hundred times more massive than it could be. “If a civilization wants to hide a sphere, then it will find a way, but this will require huge deliberate engineering changes, in the realization of which this very civilization is hardly interested.”
The James Wright project is not the first attempt to find the Dyson Sphere in the vastness of space. In 1980, researchers at Fermilab were looking for traces of a sphere in data from IRAS (InfraRed Astronomical Satelite - Infrared Orbital Observatory), the first ever infrared sky survey. They found several candidates for the role of the sphere, but upon detailed examination they turned out to be giant stars, or cosmic dust, which absorbs light, and after it re-emits in the infrared spectrum.
However, the Wright team has access to information that Fermilab specialists could only dream of. They will study three different infrared scans of space, including the WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) provided by NASA (exactly the one on the title of the article) which is hundreds of times more sensitive than its ancestor IRAS. They will search for the Dyson Spheres in our galaxy, as well as at once in whole galaxies with an excess of waste of heat - galaxies, which can contain at once many stars enveloped in technological superstructures.
If Wright and his team find something truly beyond the range of expected astronomical phenomena, a long process of in-depth study will begin, involving astronomers and telescopes from all over the world. He also noted that whatever the initial data, he would not draw any hasty conclusions. “Every time when humanity is confronted with an inexplicable phenomenon, similar to the activities of alien civilizations, it gradually becomes clear - this is a really interesting phenomenon, but not related to extraterrestrial intelligence,” he said. Indeed, Nikolai Kardashev believed that he had found really suitable candidates for the role of a type III civilization who collect energy on galactic scales. But after a detailed study it turned out that the objects found were nothing but quasars of unprecedented beauty.
Quasar
Toward the end of our conversation, I asked Wright if the Dyson Sphere and the Kardashev Scale had competing theoretical models describing what more advanced civilizations might look like. "I am not aware of other theories published in the leading scientific literature," he said, "But it is quite possible that they exist." In astrobiology there is a very illusive line between science and science fiction. “It often happens that the best thoughts and reasoning on this topic are exactly fiction novels with cheap covers,” Wright said. "But I can definitely say that it is a bit strange to write a proposal for serious scientific research, when a good half of the books on your shelf are science fiction."
Pictured: Part of the NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer ( WISE ) review, visible in the infrared spectrum.
Back in 1960, a mathematician, physicist, and in many ways an ingenious specialist, Freeman Dyson predicted that every civilization in the Universe would sooner or later exhaust all the energy reserves of its home planet, provided that it survives a sufficient amount of time. Dyson argued that this event is one of the main obstacles in the evolution of any civilization, and the way to overcome it is the same for everyone: building huge collectors of solar energy, in other words, the shell around their “native” star is an extensive solar power station. So, the astronomers decided to call this theoretical superstructure the “Dyson Sphere”. Dyson’s reflections may look like nothing more than a thought experiment, but if his hypothesis proved to be true, then it can have amazing consequences: if you want to find advanced alien civilizations, you should look at the signs of the existence of the Dyson Sphere.
Last month, a trio of astronomers headed by Jason Wrigth from Penn State University began a two-year search for Dyson's Sphere, a study that will affect not only the Milky Way, but also millions of other galaxies. Their project was recently awarded a large award from the Temlpeton Foundation, a charitable organization that seeks research that aims to answer the "big questions" facing humanity: questions relating to "the purpose of man and / or to the final idea of ​​reality ".
')
So, how does Wright and his team intend to find the Dyson Sphere? Reflecting on the "sphere", we mechanically imagine its integral structure, but Wright said that his team does not intend to search for an integral shell. “Even if we imagine that there is enough mass in our solar system to build a solid sphere, such a structure will be mechanically impossible,” said Wright. "Most likely, it will look like a moving cluster (swarm) of solar energy collectors."
Such a bold assumption about the future of the fantastic alien technology may look a bit unscientific, but the search for extraterrestrial civilizations is always based on similar, too naive, and maybe even a little faddish ideas. Suffice it to recall the SETI project (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - eng. Search for Extraterrestrial Mind), which hopes to find confirmation of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations by constantly monitoring the starry sky for a sign of the presence of an alien radio signal. At present, people have not come close to the amount of energy that is required for such a radio signal that SETI listened to with bated breath. Earlier this year, astronomer Robert Gray told me that in order to provide a radio beacon, capable of broadcasting a radio signal without stopping in all directions, with the power needed to be caught in a few light years from us, energy would be required from thousands at the same time working large high-power power plants. SETI relies on the fact that developed civilizations will value communicating with others so much that it even justifies such a serious expenditure of energy. He also hopes that such civilizations communicate using radio waves, and they use precisely those frequencies that we observe. For us, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is not just a search for something living on a distant planet, it is a search for a civilization that develops and uses technology in a predictable way.
Compared to SETI, the search aimed at the Dyson Spheres is more modest in its expectations about the goals of developed alien civilizations. In fact, most of his assumptions were based directly on elementary biology. As Wright, the project manager, explained to me, “Life, by definition, uses energy, which then in turn re-emits as heat.” The more civilization, the more energy it consumes, and the more heat it radiates. Life is also (by definition) reproduced, which provides for the possibility of exponentially growing energy needs. And if it is not stopped, then this growth will ultimately be limited by the available energy on the planet. This will leave a growing civilization no choice but to extract energy from other planets, and ultimately from stars.
Take Earth as an example. As Oliver Morton noted in his beautiful metaphor: approximately 120,000 terawatts of energy fall daily to earth. This is 10,000 times more than what is used by our industrial civilization. This is really a lot of energy, but we have to remember that our civilization is quite young, and it is growing really fast. In just some 30 years, we have doubled the energy consumption. If this trend continues, then in 400 years we will use as much energy as the sun gives to our planet. And maybe this will be the very time when we will plan the construction of the Dyson Sphere.
It is reasonable to assume that a developed alien civilization may be exponentially more energy-intensive, especially considering that its industrial revolution and the irreversible growth of energy needs began, perhaps billions of years ago. Dyson spheres can be one of the oldest and most successful phenomena in the open spaces of our universe.
An anonymous concept of the possible structure of the “swarm” of the Dyson Sphere. (Wikimedia Commons)
The idea of ​​the Dyson Sphere also intersects with another theory of the development of civilization: “The Kardashev scale”. In 1964, the Soviet astronomer, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nikolai Kardashev, tried to build a theory of scientific and technological progress based on increasing the energy sources of civilization over time. According to the Kardashev Scale, I type of civilization will use all the energy available on the planet, type II - all the energy of their nearest star, and type III will capture all the energy of their galaxy. The search for Dyson Spheres is essentially a search for type II civilizations. And since it is based only on the ability of civilizations to produce energy, this becomes another indisputable advantage over SETI: it allows you to find an alien mind that is not necessarily interested in communicating with us.
And according to this, if Dyson's Spheres really exist somewhere, they “promise” to emit a special kind of heat trails, traces that we can see with our infrared telescopes. Solar energy will heat the Dyson Sphere as the computer heats up due to the electricity flowing inside it. Heat will be abundantly emitted from the sphere in the form of light in the mid-infrared region of the spectrum.
A civilization that built the Dyson Sphere would have to take many measures to avoid detection: either to get rid of the radiated heat in some new way, or by creating massive radiators that would release the excess heat so much that it would cool the sphere to it can be lost in the cosmic microwave background - a weak residual luminescence from the Big Bang. Wright also noted that the implementation of the latter would make the sphere a hundred times more massive than it could be. “If a civilization wants to hide a sphere, then it will find a way, but this will require huge deliberate engineering changes, in the realization of which this very civilization is hardly interested.”
The James Wright project is not the first attempt to find the Dyson Sphere in the vastness of space. In 1980, researchers at Fermilab were looking for traces of a sphere in data from IRAS (InfraRed Astronomical Satelite - Infrared Orbital Observatory), the first ever infrared sky survey. They found several candidates for the role of the sphere, but upon detailed examination they turned out to be giant stars, or cosmic dust, which absorbs light, and after it re-emits in the infrared spectrum.
However, the Wright team has access to information that Fermilab specialists could only dream of. They will study three different infrared scans of space, including the WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) provided by NASA (exactly the one on the title of the article) which is hundreds of times more sensitive than its ancestor IRAS. They will search for the Dyson Spheres in our galaxy, as well as at once in whole galaxies with an excess of waste of heat - galaxies, which can contain at once many stars enveloped in technological superstructures.
If Wright and his team find something truly beyond the range of expected astronomical phenomena, a long process of in-depth study will begin, involving astronomers and telescopes from all over the world. He also noted that whatever the initial data, he would not draw any hasty conclusions. “Every time when humanity is confronted with an inexplicable phenomenon, similar to the activities of alien civilizations, it gradually becomes clear - this is a really interesting phenomenon, but not related to extraterrestrial intelligence,” he said. Indeed, Nikolai Kardashev believed that he had found really suitable candidates for the role of a type III civilization who collect energy on galactic scales. But after a detailed study it turned out that the objects found were nothing but quasars of unprecedented beauty.
Quasar
Toward the end of our conversation, I asked Wright if the Dyson Sphere and the Kardashev Scale had competing theoretical models describing what more advanced civilizations might look like. "I am not aware of other theories published in the leading scientific literature," he said, "But it is quite possible that they exist." In astrobiology there is a very illusive line between science and science fiction. “It often happens that the best thoughts and reasoning on this topic are exactly fiction novels with cheap covers,” Wright said. "But I can definitely say that it is a bit strange to write a proposal for serious scientific research, when a good half of the books on your shelf are science fiction."
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/153835/
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