Dyson Spheres Key to Find Alien Civilizations Higher on Kardashev Scale
Searching for intelligent life in the universe? Then look for their energy source. An update on the hunt for Dyson Spheres.
In June of 1960, astrophysicist Freeman Dyson published his paper Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation in the journal Science. In it he argued a way to detect intelligent life in the universe by finding their energy signature that would be created by, he presumed a highly advanced technology.
He wrote, “If extraterrestrial intelligent beings exist and have reached a high level of technical development, one byproduct of their energy metabolism is likely to be the large-scale conversion of starlight into far-infrared radiation.”
Dyson, who died one year ago this month at age 96, believed that an advanced technology would harness solar power from a star with an array of solar panels. He explained in a 2003 interview that he once described it as a biosphere, but since then this theory has been known as a Dyson Sphere.
Dr. Seth Shostak Sr. Astronomer at the SETI Institute explains, “If you’re looking for E.T., if you’re looking for intelligence elsewhere in the universe, you’ve got to figure there are societies out there that are way more advanced than we are, you know the universe has been around for a long time. And they may have constructed something like a Dyson Sphere, or more accurately a Dyson Swarm, or something we can see. And there have actually been searches for alien Dyson Spheres.”
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Professor Says ETs May Hitch Rides on Rogue Planets
The search for extraterrestrials in space continues as a new theory is proposed: Could rogue planets be used as spacecraft by alien hitchhikers?
Free-floating “rogue” planets are interstellar objects with planetary masses that are not gravitationally bound to a star. Scientists predict there could be billions of free-floating rogue plants in space.
With this in mind, Irina Romanovskaya, a professor of physics and astronomy at Houston Community College just published a new study proposing aliens could hitch a ride on these rogue planets.
She writes, “I propose that extraterrestrial civilizations may also use free-floating planets as interstellar transportation to reach, explore and colonize other planetary systems. I discuss how extraterrestrial civilizations may travel from their home worlds to free-floating planets, and how they may transfer from their free-floating planets to other planetary systems.”
And as Romanovskaya wrote in an email to VICE, “Some advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, if they exist, might hitch a ride on free-floating planets… which is why I call such hypothetical civilizations Cosmic Hitchhikers.”
Is this idea so far-fetched? Or could it be possible?
