Illustration of Dyson Spheres.
Credit: Wikimedia commons
Space-enthusiasts who are on a quest to find alien life might have had a possible breakthrough in this arduous or as some might claim futile mission.
Recently, some scientists have claimed to have spotted technosignatures from a technological civilization’s Dyson Spheres.
A Dyson Sphere is a hypothetical project whose ultimate aim is to capture the power of a star.
Many scientists are of the opinion that in order to meet the energy requirements of the distant future, harnessing the energy of a star is the way to go.
However, this project at the moment is a pipe dream for people who hail from this generation. It can only be achieved by distant civilisations who are extremely advanced.
People from the future civilization must build huge structures around the star to harness its power. Scientists believe that only those civilizations could make this dream come true who measure Level II on the Kardashev scale.
In a brand-new discovery, scientists from the US, UK, India, and Sweden have developed a method to detect Dyson sphere signatures.
Named after the Greek god of fire and metallurgy, Project Hephaistos aims to find life in the outer space.
The Science Times reported that the research team presented a comprehensive search for partial Dyson spheres by analyzing infrared and optical observations from Gaia, WISE, and 2MASS.
Led by lead author Matías Suazo, the paper is titled 'Project Hephaistos - II. Dyson sphere candidates from Gaia DR3, 2MASS, and WISE'.
Gaia, 2MASS, and WISE are astronomical surveys that generate large-scale data from individual stars.
Researchers said, "“This second paper examines the Gaia DR3, 2MASS, and WISE photometry of—5 million sources to build a catalogue of potential Dyson spheres."
However, analyzing such extensive and large amount of data is a herculean task. Thus, the researchers employed a method in which they looked for partially completed spheres that would give off excess infrared radiation.
But, there is method also presents a hurdle. The Dyson spheres aren't the only ones to emit excess infrared radiation. Many natural celestial objects also do so. (Eg circumstellar dust rings and nebulae)
Thus, in order to filter out the chaos, scientists developed a special pipeline to detect anomalies. This pipeline focused on sources that display anomalous infrared excesses.
However even after the pipeline, the selected 'candidate' has to pass another test based on factors like H-alpha emissions, optical variability, and astrometry.
“A specialized pipeline has been developed to identify potential Dyson sphere candidates focusing on detecting sources that display anomalous infrared excesses that cannot be attributed to any known natural source of such radiation,” the researchers explain.
Scientists said that from this list 368 sources survived the last cut. However, 328 were rejected as blends. Of these, 29 were rejected as irregulars, and four were rejected as nebulars.
At the end, only seven potential candidates were left out of about 5 million initial objects.
Though the researchers are confident about these seven options, there is a slight chance, these candidates may not be what the researchers a looking for.
There could be other reasons why these candidates were emitting excess infrared. Many believe that it could be due to warm debris disks surrounding them.
The team now wants to perform an optical spectroscopy to understand the seven candidates.