Have Scientists Found 'Potential Evidence' of Dyson Spheres? (cnn.com) 67
Have scientists discovered infrared radiation, evidence of waste heat generated by the energy-harvesting star-surrounding spheres first proposed by British American physicist Freeman Dyson? CNN reports:
[A] new study that looked at 5 million stars in the Milky Way galaxy suggests that seven candidates could potentially be hosting Dyson spheres — a finding that's attracting scrutiny and alternate theories... Using historical data from telescopes that pick up infrared signatures, the research team looked at stars located within less than 1,000 light-years from Earth: "We started with a sample of 5 million stars, and we applied filters to try to get rid of as much data contamination as possible," said lead study author Matías Suazo, a doctoral student in the department of physics and astronomy of Uppsala University in Sweden. "So far, we have seven sources that we know are glowing in the infrared but we don't know why, so they stand out...."
Among the natural causes that could explain the infrared glow are an unlucky alignment in the observation, with a galaxy in the background overlapping with the star, planetary collisions creating debris, or the fact that the stars may be young and therefore still surrounded by disks of hot debris from which planets would later form...
An earlier study, published in March and using data from the same sources as the new report, had also found infrared anomalies among a sample dataset of 5 million stars in our galaxy. "We got 53 candidates for anomalies that cannot be well explained, but can't say that all of them are Dyson sphere candidates, because that's not what we are specifically looking for," said Gabriella Contardo, a postdoctoral research fellow at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, who led the earlier study. She added that she plans to check the candidates against Suazo's model to see how many tie into it. "You need to eliminate all other hypotheses and explanations before saying that they could be a Dyson sphere," she added. "To do so you need to also rule out that it's not some kind of debris disk, or some kind of planetary collision, and that also pushes the science forward in other fields of astronomy — so it's a win-win."
Both Contardo and Suazo agree that more research is needed on the data, and that ultimately they could turn to NASA's James Webb Space Telescope for more information, as it is powerful enough to observe the candidate stars directly. However, because of the lengthy, competitive procedures that regulate use of the telescope, securing access might take some time.
CNN adds that "A May 23 paper published in response to the one by Suazo and his colleagues suggests that at least three of the seven stars have been 'misidentified' as Dyson spheres and could instead be 'hot DOGs' — hot dust-obscured galaxies — and that the remaining four could probably be explained this way as well."
But "As for Dyson himself, if he were still alive, he also would be highly skeptical that these observations represent a technological signature, his son George argued: 'But the discovery of new, non-technological astronomical phenomena is exactly why he thought we should go out and look.' "
Among the natural causes that could explain the infrared glow are an unlucky alignment in the observation, with a galaxy in the background overlapping with the star, planetary collisions creating debris, or the fact that the stars may be young and therefore still surrounded by disks of hot debris from which planets would later form...
An earlier study, published in March and using data from the same sources as the new report, had also found infrared anomalies among a sample dataset of 5 million stars in our galaxy. "We got 53 candidates for anomalies that cannot be well explained, but can't say that all of them are Dyson sphere candidates, because that's not what we are specifically looking for," said Gabriella Contardo, a postdoctoral research fellow at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, who led the earlier study. She added that she plans to check the candidates against Suazo's model to see how many tie into it. "You need to eliminate all other hypotheses and explanations before saying that they could be a Dyson sphere," she added. "To do so you need to also rule out that it's not some kind of debris disk, or some kind of planetary collision, and that also pushes the science forward in other fields of astronomy — so it's a win-win."
Both Contardo and Suazo agree that more research is needed on the data, and that ultimately they could turn to NASA's James Webb Space Telescope for more information, as it is powerful enough to observe the candidate stars directly. However, because of the lengthy, competitive procedures that regulate use of the telescope, securing access might take some time.
CNN adds that "A May 23 paper published in response to the one by Suazo and his colleagues suggests that at least three of the seven stars have been 'misidentified' as Dyson spheres and could instead be 'hot DOGs' — hot dust-obscured galaxies — and that the remaining four could probably be explained this way as well."
But "As for Dyson himself, if he were still alive, he also would be highly skeptical that these observations represent a technological signature, his son George argued: 'But the discovery of new, non-technological astronomical phenomena is exactly why he thought we should go out and look.' "
They're just doing the classic internet approach (Score:5, Funny)
Of by giving a wrong answer it will motivate everyone to seek the right answer.
"We have seven unknown objects, how do you think we get some more scope time on them?"
"Just say we think they're Dyson spheres and every astronomer on Earth will be looking trying to prove us wrong"
Re: (Score:2)
It's a useful technique
Re: (Score:1)
I hear they call it the "Actually Protocol"
It can only be activated during Def Con Lunchmeat
Re: (Score:2)
re: "They're just doing the classic internet approach..."
The classic internet approach I was thinking of is Betteridge's law of headlines [wikipedia.org]
"Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
Re: They're just doing the classic internet approa (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Telescope time is highly competitive, I very much doubt the organizations owning those telescopes are going to be swayed by "possible Dyson spheres", or any other geometrical wish.
Re: They're just doing the classic internet approa (Score:2)
Reminds me of an old joke.
"What's the fastest way to learn how to do ____ in Linux?"
"Post on a Linux forum, 'Linux sucks because it can't do ____."
Re: (Score:1)
But how were they built? (Score:2)
My understanding of Dyson spheres is that they're habitats (yielding a LOT of room) built by civilizations that don't have star travel. The conflict is, as I remember, that it takes so much matter and energy to build them that every planetary system within light-years would need to be scoured for building materials. So on the one hand, a Dyson sphere would yield the living area of thousands of planets, which would eliminate the need for a stellar drive (at least, for a very long time) but on the other han
Re: (Score:3)
Dyson spheres are solar collectors. They potentially give you lots of living space as a side effect. Star Trek pictured them as actual shells, but more realistically they're a swarm of solar power satellites, some of which might have habitats attached.
You could make a pretty good one out of Mercury. You could probably make a less complete one out that still noticeably screwed up the star's spectrum out of something like the asteroid belt.
Re: (Score:2)
My understanding of Dyson spheres is that they're habitats (yielding a LOT of room) built by civilizations that don't have star travel.
It's not about habitat, it's about collecting energy. The idea is that you can use something close to all of the energy emitted by your star. Dyson also didn't believe a literal shell was possible.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, the entire concept of a Dyson Sphere is absurd.
It did inspire a couple of good Star Trek episodes, though.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, the entire concept of a Dyson Sphere is absurd.
A single shell is absurd, but that is not what a Dyson Sphere is.
In his original description, Freeman Dyson made it clear that it was a swarm of independent satellites.
Re: (Score:2)
The F'sherl-Ganni also constructed several buuthandi, Schlock Mercenary's take on a Dyson sphere. A buuthandi is a balloon of solar-sail material around a star. Light pressure and solar wind offset the star's gravitation to keep the balloon inflated, while habitats and maintenance facilities dangling from the inner side act as ballast to balance the sails. Despite their tremendous surface area, a buuthandi provides a disproportionally small amount of livable habitat.[5] "Control cables, millions of square kilometers of slack sail material, and some very clever engineering allow the 'balloon' to compensate for (and, in some cases, mitigate) the mood swings of the contained star."[6] In the Schlock Mercenary universe, a buuthandi is about 300 million kilometers in diameter.[7] ("Buuthandi" is a shortened form of a F'sherl-Ganni phrase which, after the foul language is removed, can be roughly translated as "This was expensive to build.")
Presumably this isn't built around Sol, and there's no reason they would have aimed for 9.8 m/s^2 gravity. Also unlike a Dyson Swarm this seems like in would be constantly at risk of falling into the sun, if it even works at all.
NO (Score:3)
They're impractical to the point that even if you had the means to build and sustain them, you wouldn't waste your time and resources doing so. If you were mad enough to do so, you'd never be in control of the required resources.
Whenever a pop science article talks about 'Dyson spheres', that's because they think you're too dull and stupid to be interested in an article about an as-yet unknown phenomena and they want fame/money/both by fascinating the gullible/uneducated market.
Re: (Score:2)
That's why this article is from cnn.com, not science.org.
"However, because of the lengthy, competitive procedures that regulate use of the telescope, securing access might take some time."
Well, that and the fact that the actual scientific community probably doesn't think searching for Dyson Spheres is a particularly high priority.
Re: (Score:2)
> the actual scientific community probably doesn't think searching for Dyson Spheres is a particularly high priority.
There I might disagree - much like the government occasionally puts out Zombie survival plans to get people's attention and learn how to survive a whole bunch of serious emergencies, looking for Dyson spheres isn't limited to Dyson spheres.
After all, we know they must not exist, so if you find something you can currently only explain as a potential Dyson sphere, you've actually just found
Re: (Score:2)
To be clear - I wasn't intending to say there's no interest. I just suspect there are a lot of other actual and theoretical phenomena higher on the priority list, and there's only the one telescope.
Re: (Score:2)
"First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?"
Re: (Score:2)
The two books by Roger McBride Allen, The Ring of Charon and The Shattered Sphere, revolve around a civilization which is comprised of beings who use gravity to move ships through space and send out craft which are programmed/designed to use all available materials in a solar system to create a Dyson sphere. They have an adversary which humans seek out to help them stop the destruction of the solar system and the remaining people therein. He does have a third book, but it's never been published so we don'
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They're impractical to the point that even if you had the means to build and sustain them, you wouldn't waste your time and resources doing so.
how else would you squeeze out the maximum energy from your single star? why you would want to do that and what would be the use for all that energy is a different matter, but assumed there is a need, it seems a sensible possibility. you don't have to make them in one go. just send one panel to orbit the star and a mechanism to collect, then another, then another ... you can make use of them from day one, and if you keep going you eventually will be the proud owner of a dyson sphere.
If you were mad enough to do so, you'd never be in control of the required resources.
why?
Whenever a pop science article talks about 'Dyson spheres', that's because they think you're too dull and stupid to be interested in an article about an as-yet unknown phenomena and they want fame/money/both by fascinating the gullible/uneducated market.
this i don't disagre
Re: (Score:2)
I mean its about as likely as a Dyson Sphere powering a civilization.
Re: (Score:2)
>how else would you squeeze out the maximum energy from your single star?
You don't. You can't. Typically a star is the overwhelming majority of matter in the kind of system we believe you'd find habitable worlds - our Sun is 99.86% of the Solar system's mass. You could gather up every atom orbiting Sol and wouldn't be able to make a shell far enough out to survive the heat or close enough in to be thick enough to be stable.
If you're able to travel to other stars for more mass - keeping in mind we're t
Re: (Score:2)
then you end up with a woefully incomplete dyson sphere, but it might still work and collect a huge quantity of energy, right? the panels might be as thin as solar sails, kept in position with tiny drives. at some point you just consume some barren planet for that. say mars ... no wait, not mars, that's supposed to be our second opportunity paradise resort :-)
i think it's harder that our civilization even passes the 1st phase of the kardashev scale to even think of needing so much energy in the first place,
Re:NO (Score:5, Informative)
>how else would you squeeze out the maximum energy from your single star?
You don't. You can't. Typically a star is the overwhelming majority of matter in the kind of system we believe you'd find habitable worlds - our Sun is 99.86% of the Solar system's mass. You could gather up every atom orbiting Sol and wouldn't be able to make a shell far enough out to survive the heat or close enough in to be thick enough to be stable.
Didn't even try to do any math? Let's say we make the shell at the orbit of Venus which has a radius of 100 million km. That is a sphere with the surface area of about 3*10^22 m^2. The mass of Jupiter is 2*10^27 kg so we get a areal density of the shell of up to 64 tonnes per square meter -- that is pretty thick, like 64 km thick at the density of water. But there absolutely no need to make a thick shell to gather sunlight. We have solar cells 15 microns thick right now. A shell made out of thin collectors either in orbit, or stationary and held in place against solar gravity by light pressure, are both options, and can transmit their collected energy in more concentrated from to habitats (or other energy consuming entities) orbiting beyond them.
Any large scale, long term structure (by which I mean a shell of separate collectors) would be self-repairing to give it unlimited life.
Re: (Score:2)
A Dyson sphere is a stupid thing. Stars age and die. Do you really want your entire civilization wiped out when the star goes nova? Do you really want to build another Dyson sphere on another star in a few billion years?
The path forward will look more like the Death Star. An environment that can move towards resources instead of merely exploiting what is nearby. Can you imagine parking one of these within an extra-galactic "nebula"? 3 billion years would pass for the fools inside of the galaxy while your "d
Re: (Score:2)
You could gather up every atom orbiting Sol and wouldn't be able to make a shell far enough out to survive the heat or close enough in to be thick enough to be stable.
Not true.
A shell one centimeter thick (plenty thick enough for a solar panel) would need 2*Pi R^2 * 0.01 cubic meters of material, where R=1.5e11 meters.
V = 1.4e21 cubic meters
The Earth's volume is 1.08e21, which is enough to build 2/3rds of the sphere. Toss in Venus, Mars, and Mercury, and you have plenty without even using the gas giants.
If not a Dyson Sphere (Score:2)
Perhaps at least a Dyson Vacuum.
Re: (Score:2)
Now that would really suck!
spacetime said it best (Score:1)
it's never aliens
but it's always fun to think about the fact that it might be aliens :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
One day it's going to be aliens. Maybe within my lifetime.
But not for something like this; my bet is on spectrographic analysis of exoplanet atmospheres.
Short answer: no, (Score:2)
longer answer: hell no!
Dyson's big problem: gravity (Score:4, Insightful)
The concept of a Dyson sphere is that you have a giant hollow ball orbiting a star.
At the equator of this ball, the centrifugal force of its orbit could potentially keep the "land" from falling into the star. But at the poles, there would be almost zero centrifugal force, nothing to keep the land from being pulled into the star. And forget structural support, there is no steel or other material hard enough to withstand that kind of force, at that scale.
This is pure science fiction, it's *less* possible than "warp speed" travel or teleportation.
Re: (Score:2)
FWIW, the sphere doesn't need to be complete; the areas around the poles, where centrifugal force becomes too low can be removed. You end up with a hybrid between Dyson's sphere and Niven's Ringworld, and still have a LOT of area to collect solar energy.
It would be interesting to see whether the inside of the sphere can hold an atmosphere. You could build mountains at the edge of the holes holding the atmosphere in (like Niven's ring), but they'd need to be much taller, since the centrifugal force would be
Re: (Score:2)
The poles are only the extremes. Even at 10 degrees from the equator, the speed would be about 2% slower than the speed at the equator, enough to cause that part of the "ring" to collapse towards the star. Also, that part of the ring at 10 degrees from the equator, would always be compressing towards the equator, because the orbital plane is always centered through the star. So that part of the ring at 10 degrees would want to move from 10 degrees north, to 10 degrees south, and back. At 20 degrees, the slo
Re: (Score:2)
The concept of a Dyson sphere is that you have a giant hollow ball orbiting a star.
No, it isn't, and it never was.
In his original 1960 paper, Freeman Dyson made it clear that he was talking about a swarm of independent satellites.
A Dyson Sphere has never meant a rigid hollow sphere.
Re: (Score:3)
You're right, the ball (you know, "sphere") might night have been Dyson's original concept. But it certainly has been represented that way on many occasions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
So let's take your original form, a constellation of orbiting...structures. You still have a big problem, because all those orbits won't form nice concentric latitude lines around the star. Rather, they'll all have to orbit the star on a plane that intersects the star itself. The risk of collisions would be enormous, wi
Re: (Score:2)
But at the poles, there would be almost zero centrifugal force, nothing to keep the land from being pulled into the star. And forget structural support, there is no steel or other material hard enough to withstand that kind of force, at that scale.
Couldn't you make the sphere rotate in diagonal with respect to the equator? That way you'd get two perpendicular centrifugal forces, one "east/west" and one "north/south", that would pull against gravity at all points of the sphere.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure if you're joking, so I'll answer your question at face value.
The equator is literally defined by the direction of rotation. So if you altered the rotation to be on a diagonal from the original rotation, well guess what, your equator is now on a diagonal from the original equator. The earth itself is an example of this, the equator is at 23.5 degrees offset from the orbital plane. This angle is what gives us our seasons. But the centrifugal force of that rotation at the north and south poles is
Re: (Score:2)
A ringworld is more realistic, but even that would require many advances in material sciences and physics to be plausible.
Other than for prestige, why would anyone bother building one? If you have the ability to build one, your civilization has probably solved population issues, and is built on a post-scarcity fully automated luxury communism model.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, because otherwise somebody might *find* the star. Horrors!
Re: (Score:2)
Humanity seems to already have solved "population issues." The world's population is expected to peak in about 2083, and then start to decline. The world's use of land for agriculture has steadily *declined* over the last 50 years. But we're pretty far from building a ring world, so I'm thinking the population thing is quite a bit easier.
Re: (Score:1)
The concept of a Dyson sphere is that you have a giant hollow ball orbiting a star.
False.
Re: (Score:2)
If you keep reading that Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] you'll notice the following:
Fictional depictions often describe a solid shell of matter enclosing a star – an arrangement considered by Dyson himself to be impossible
Notice that in my post, I didn't say anything about what Dyson himself personally proposed. But the concept as popularly described, certainly does include the concept of a solid shell.
Even if we go with the original swarm, that doesn't work any better, because all of the orbits would intersect, with catastrophic consequences.
Re: Dyson's big problem: gravity (Score:2)
If you insist on being wrong, sure. So much for slashdot being for nerds.
Re: (Score:2)
So you're going to say I'm wrong, without saying exactly what I said that was wrong? OK, can't argue with that!
Re: (Score:2)
I said exactly what was wrong already, and you already defended it. If you forgot what you said, you can click "parent"
Re: (Score:2)
Oh I see, so you only wanted to focus on the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, and throw out the rest. Well sure, if you only limit your scope to Dyson's original concept, then yes I was wrong. I wasn't, but there you have it.
Re: Dyson's big problem: gravity (Score:2)
If you don't care what Dyson said about it, then don't call it a Dyson sphere.
Re: (Score:2)
That's kind of like saying that because Steve Wilhite says GIF is pronounced with a hard G, the matter is settled! https://www.cnn.com/2013/05/22... [cnn.com]
Lots of words or concepts morph after their original invention. "Idiot" was once the politically correct way to refer to people who had previously been called "morons." "Gay" used to mean "happy." "Dyson sphere" used to mean "a constellation of orbiting structures."
Re: (Score:2)
Before the recent Chicago influx, I have thought for decades that the loose way illegal immigration was handled was THE biggest problem inside of our country, affecting so many other things. I felt sorry for Texas when watching those volunteers of the "Minuteman Project" on TV hopelessly try to help at their border.
This is my point. People are coming already, legally or not, so why would you think that giving them the option to legally register to work and pay taxes, would somehow make unemployment spike? I don't get it.
I don't think they will all want/be physica
A bit of a design flaw :o (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The high-grade (low-entropy) energy is harvested by the sphere and remitted as low-grade (high-entropy) IR radiation on the outside of the sphere.
That's why an intense source of IR is a candidate for investigation as a possible alien civilization.
I'm not saying it's aliens, but... (Score:1)
it's aliens.
Interview (Score:3)
Sub to the Event Horizon channel on YouTube if you haven't already - John interviewed the data scientist who wrote the paper and she answers all the akshuallys in the comments here.
Assuming the point of those was to drive towards a better understanding....
TL;DR : three possibilities, one is a Dyson Swarm (we have a tiny one already), more data is needed.
I don't believe it (Score:2)
It would be very strange if there were lots of Dyson spheres and not at least a few in the process of being built right now.
We can’t ignore the Fermi Paradox (Score:1)
CMBR explained (Score:2)
Good one (Score:1)
Dark matter is made by aliens. Prove me wrong.