The two teams of astronomers, in Sweden and Italy, who published their results on the ArXiv pre-publication platform, are quick to add that we cannot, at the present time, rule out more realistic hypotheses to explain the strangeness of these 60 stars.
Dyson field concept » It comes from a seemingly logical logic: If we assume that any (very) technologically advanced civilization needs more and more energy to meet its needs, there will come a time when the solar panels on the planet will no longer be enough. The best way to collect each photon of solar energy is to surround its star with a ball of solar panels: says physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson. This was mentioned in 1960This is what came to be called the Dyson field. He himself admitted that he found inspiration in a science fiction novel, Star makerpublished in 1937.
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He has the concept An advantage for hunters from extraterrestrial civilizations : Theoretically, we could detect a star surrounded by such a sphere at great distances, due to the infrared radiation that would be generated by this “construction”, which is permanently heated from the “inside”.
However, this concept has been widely criticized: to mechanical limitations Which would make a very rigid “shell” impossible, given the energy needed to make it, and the fact that it would take at least 800 years to build, according to Dyson.
But the idea is enough of a dream for these two groups of astronomers Choose to combine data From the European satellite Gaia – which maps billions of stars in our galaxy – with data from various infrared sky observations. Of the 5 million stars subscribed to these databases, They kept 60 Whose “excess” of infrared radiation cannot be explained by natural phenomena, as they say in their own articles: it is a matter 7 red dwarfs It is located less than 900 light-years from Earth 53 larger starsSome are similar in size to our Sun, located less than 6,500 light-years away.
The next step could be the James Webb Space Telescope, which could theoretically determine whether this infrared signal comes from a solid crust or, for example, from a huge cloud of rocky debris, representing a forming planet.
