To search for potential Dyson spheres, two teams of astronomers, one led by Matías Suazo at Uppsala University in Sweden and the other by Gaby Contardo at the International School for Advanced Studies in Italy, combined data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite – which is mapping the position and motion of .

Sufficiently advanced aliens would be able to capture vast quantities of energy from their star using a massive structure called a Dyson sphere. Such a device would give off an infrared heat signature – and astronomers have just spotted 60 stars that seem to match

Two surveys of millions of stars in our galaxy have revealed mysterious spikes in infrared heat coming from dozens of them. Astronomers say this could be evidence for alien civilisations harnessing energy from their stars by using a vast construction known as a Dyson sphere – although they can’t fully rule out more mundane explanations

The quest to find intelligent extraterrestrial life has captivated humanity for a long time, motivating the development of various strategies to search for signs of advanced civilizations. These strategies comprise multiple techniques and span different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. One approach considers the existence of  Dyson spheres, one specific type of megastructure theorized by Freeman Dyson over sixty years ago. Dyson hypothesized that advanced civilizations would eventually outgrow their planetary resources and aim to collect the energy of their central star by building colossal structures to harness the star’s energy. The potential existence of these structures represents a potential technosignature that might be hiding in large astronomical surveys, and this thesis revolves around exploring such a premise. First, we devote our search to assessing upper limits on the prevalence of Dyson spheres in the Milky Way by analyzing combined optical and mid-infrared photometric data. These upper limits are presented on the fraction of stars that may potentially host Dyson spheres and are model-dependent. We find robust limits of 1 over 100,000 stars for 300 K Dyson spheres at a 90% completion level within 100 pc. After that, we develop a pipeline especially tailored to identify potential Dyson sphere candidates in a sample of five million objects with available optical, near, and mid-infrared photometric data. This pipeline yields seven M dwarfs exhibiting anomalous infrared excess that deserve further analysis. Finally, we present an analysis of photometric and, in some cases, spectroscopic data on these seven objects, plus three additional sources sharing similar properties. The stellar parameters, derived from calibrated empirical relationships for M dwarfs, reveal no irregularities compared to the typical M dwarf population. While the infrared properties of our targets resemble, in some cases, those of young stars, spectroscopic data show no signs of youth usually observed for such objects. We still lack a clear explanation for the infrared excess of these stars, but we acknowledge that future follow-up observations could probe scenarios in which the infrared excess is due to circumstellar dust emission.

In the early 60s, Dyson (1960) proposed an innovative methodology for searching for signs of extraterrestrial life. He presumed that highly advanced civilizations, in the pursuit of more energy resources, would construct an artificial, light-absorbing structure around their host star. This hypothetical structure, later referred to as a “Dyson Sphere”, would allow them to harvest energy in the form of starlight. Starlight harvesting could, in principle, result in different observational signa- tures that may be detected using existing telescopes. These signatures include optical dimming of the host star due to direct obscuration, and waste-heat emission from the absorbing structure (e.g., Dyson 1960; Wright et al. 2016; Wright 2020). Consequently, searching for anomalous infrared beacons in the sky has become an alterna- tive to traditional communication-based searches for technologically advanced civilizations. One of the advantages of searches based on “Dysonian” signatures is that it does not rely on the willingness of other civilizations to contact us

The Dyson sphere has become such a staple of SETI as well as science fiction that it’s hard to conceive how lightly Freeman Dyson himself took the idea. In a 2008 interview with Slate, he described the Dyson sphere as no more than ‘a little joke,’ and noted “it’s amusing that of course you get to be famous only for the things you don’t think are serious.” Indeed, Dyson’s 1960 paper “Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation,” was but a one-page document in Science that grew out of his notion that an intelligent civilization might not have any interest in communicating. How, then, would astronomers on Earth go about finding it?

There’s something poetic about humanity’s attempt to detect other civilizations somewhere in the Milky Way’s expanse. There’s also something futile about it. But we’re not going to stop. There’s little doubt about that.

One group of scientists thinks that we may already have detected technosignatures from a technological civilization’s Dyson Spheres, but the detection is hidden in our vast troves of astronomical data

Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation” is a 1960 science paper by physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson. In the paper, Dyson theorized that an advanced technological civilization would eventually need to harvest energy from its local star on a large scale. He proposed that this could be done by building a system of structures that orbit the star and intercept its energy. This concept became known as the “Dyson sphere

Dyson’s paper suggests that if extraterrestrial beings have reached a high level of technical development, they may convert starlight into far-infrared radiation as a byproduct of their energy metabolism. The paper also proposes that searching for infrared radiation sources should be part of the search for interstellar radio communications. 

Infrared (IR) is a type of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths between 780 nm and 1000 μm. Common natural sources of IR include solar radiation and fire, while common artificial sources include heating devices, infrared lamps, and industrial sources of heat

If extraterrestrial intelligent beings exist and have reached a high level of technical development, one by-product of their energy metabolism is likely to be the large-scale conversion of starlight into far-infrared radiation

Dyson sphere original paper

The original paper on the Dyson sphere was published in 1960 by physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson in the journal Science. The paper is titled “Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infra-Red Radiation“

In the paper, Dyson theorized that advanced civilizations would eventually need to harvest energy from their local star on a large scale. He proposed that this could be done by building a solar-system-sized structure that orbits the star and intercepts its energy. Dyson called these structures “Dyson spheres” and speculated that they could be detected by the “waste heat” they emit at mid-infrared wavelengths. Dyson also suggested that searching for evidence of Dyson spheres could help us discover intelligent life in the galaxy. 

Dyson’s paper was inspired by Olaf Stapledon’s 1937 science fiction novel Star Maker

Why we haven’t built Dyson sphere

According to Wikipedia, building a stable Dyson sphere around the sun is currently beyond humanity’s engineering capacity. Some say that a Dyson sphere is physically impossible to construct because it’s not gravitationally stable and would be destroyed by comets and asteroids. Others say that it’s impossible due to orbital mechanics, as the different layers of the sphere would have different orbital velocities

Building a Dyson sphere would require:

• Resources A Dyson sphere would require an unprecedented amount of material resources and energy, which Earth doesn’t have. Some have suggested harvesting materials from other planets, like Mercury. 
• Technology A Dyson sphere would require technology that doesn’t currently exist. For example, it would require materials that are much stronger than carbon nanotubes or graphene to resist the star’s gravity without collapsing. 
• Global cooperation Building a Dyson sphere would be a massive undertaking that would require global cooperation. 
• Radiation pressure Large Dyson spheres would need to manage the energy, entropy, and momentum they receive from the star, or they could be blown away. 

The challenges of building a Dyson SphereThe biggest problem is one of gravity, as the Sun is so massive that it would pull in and destroy any shell which we attempted to erect around it. According to Popular Mechanics, a more realistic approach would be a Dyson Swarm

Some say that a Dyson sphere is theoretically possible, but it’s unlikely that humanity will ever be able to build one. Others say that a Dyson swarm, which is a collection of small mirrors or solar panels orbiting a star, is more practical and could be built within a millennium

A Dyson swarm would orbit a star close enough to collect a large amount of energy, but it wouldn’t enclose the star itself. It could be made up of small robot solar collectors, mirrors, living habitats, and satellites. Some say that a Dyson swarm could be an important step towards harvesting energy from other phenomena, like black holes or antimatter

Although Dyson sphere systems are theoretically possible, building a stable megastructure around the Sun is currently far beyond humanity’s engineering capacity

According to a Reddit user, it would take 51 years to build a basic Dyson sphere by generating automated factories in one year. After that, it would take 12 days of a Sunlike star’s output to equal the gravitational binding energy of an Earthlike planet, which could be quickly dismantled into raw materials

Quora user says that if it takes one year to double the number of machines or collectors, starting with one square meter, it would take about 79 years to reach the scale of a 1.0 AU Dyson sphere. They also say that it could be faster if you start with a larger set of solar panels or get closer to the sun. 

A Popular Mechanics article says that a robot-driven manufacturing process could build a Dyson Swarm in a few decades. This plan involves robots mining material from Mercury, which is then rocketed into orbit and fabricated into a Dyson Swarm unit

So if it takes 1 year to double the set of machines/collectors, and you start with 1 square meter’s worth, you would reach the scale of a 1.0 AU Dyson sphere in about 79 years that way. You could go a little faster by going closer to the sun or starting with a bigger set of solar panels

The amount of material needed to make a Dyson sphere depends on its size, thickness, and the material used. For example, a one-meter-thick Dyson sphere with a radius of 1 astronomical unit (AU) would require about 6×10^23 kg of material, which is slightly less than the mass of the moon. If the sphere were made of iron, it would require about 2.22×10^24 kg. 

According to a Quora user, the entire inner solar system would be needed to build a one AU Dyson sphere if the shell were one centimeter thick. They say that the inner planets alone would only provide enough material for a shell with a mass of 42 kg/m^2. 

A Reddit user says that a one-millimeter-thick Dyson sphere with a radius of one AU would require material equaling about 82 percent the volume of the Earth. 

According to Wikipedia, a Dyson sphere with a mass of 600 kg/m^2 would require 31 Earth-sized planets. 

Some say that a Dyson sphere is impossible to build because the tensile strength required to prevent the sphere from tearing itself apart is greater than any known material. They also say that the sphere would not bind gravitationally to its star in a stable way. 

Earth’s biggest construction project

What if humans could harness all the sun’s energy? What if extraterrestrial civilizations have already learned to harvest the energy of stars? In 1960, physicist and astronomer Freeman J. Dyson proposed the use of orbiting solar collectors to accomplish this mind-boggling feat. He first explored it as a thought experiment. Nowadays, we call these megastructures by the name Dyson spheres. And some astronomers want to search for them

The idea of a Dyson sphere started with Dyson’s two-page paper in the journal Science in 1960. The title was Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation. Dyson imagined a solar-system-sized, power-collection structure as a technology that would be inevitable for advanced civilizations in the universe. He proposed that searching for evidence of the existence of such structures might lead to the discovery of intelligent life in the galaxy

The mystery of Tabby’s Star

In recent years, astronomers explored a true-to-life possibility of a Dyson sphere. It involved a bizarre star labeled as KIC 8462852 and more popularly called Tabby’s Star. The nomenclature comes from its discoverer, Tabetha Boyajian. This star’s light is strange, with abrupt dimmings. Astronomers originally thought the star’s light might indicate a Dyson sphere. New ideas about Tabby’s Star are slightly (but not entirely) less fanciful, including the possibility of a melting exomoon. But the astronomers’ talk about a Dyson sphere was fascinating while it lasted

October 2015, citizen scientists using Planet Hunters discovered unusual light fluctuations in the star KIC 8462852, also known as Tabby’s Star, which led to speculation that a Dyson sphere may have been found. However, further analysis showed that the results were consistent with dust. Other ideas about Tabby’s Star include the possibility of a melting exomoon

However, a Dyson Swarm, which is an array of thousands of small solar panels or mirrors in orbits around the sun, is a more promising concept. Some say that an advanced species could build rings or swarms of giant solar panel-covered structures to harness energy

Is Dyson sphere habitable

According to Worldbuilding Stack Exchange, a Dyson sphere is not a habitat because there is no known way to create comfortable gravity on its inner or outer surface. However, Popular Mechanics says that a Dyson sphere built at the same distance from the sun as Earth would have 600 million times the surface area of Earth, but only a small portion of that would be habitable due to the lack of gravity

According to Space.com, Dyson wrote that a shell of a Dyson sphere that is twice the distance from the Earth to the sun could be made habitable and contain machinery to exploit the solar radiation. Futuretimeline says that a Dyson sphere could house trillions or quadrillions of people due to its size

If it could be stabilized, a Dyson Sphere built at 93 million miles from the sun, the same distance as Earth, would contain about 600 million times the surface area of our planet in its interior. However, comparatively little of the surface would be habitable on account of a lack of gravity.

One group of scientists thinks that we may already have detected technosignatures from a technological civilization’s Dyson Spheres, but the detection is hidden in our vast troves of astronomical data. A Dyson Sphere is a hypothetical engineering project that only highly advanced civilizations could build

Dyson spheres are hypothetical megastructures that surround stars to collect their energy. They can be solid structures or large arrays of satellites. Dyson spheres are a thought experiment that imagines how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy needs

Dyson spheres can be detected by their waste heat radiation, which can be seen in ultraviolet, optical, near-infrared, and mid-infrared wavelengths. In January 2021, Matiías Suazo presented results showing that Dyson spheres covering 90% of their star may occur around 1 in 10,000 stars in the Milky Way. However, closer examination revealed that the candidates identified were not main sequence stars, but binary star systems and other objects. 

In May 2024, Universe Today reported that researchers are confident that seven potential Dyson spheres out of about 5 million initial objects are legitimate. They explained that all sources are clear mid-infrared emitters with no clear contaminators or signatures that indicate an obvious mid-infrared origin

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