NASA’s Webb Telescope Rules Out Two New Dyson Sphere Candidates
Researchers using the James Webb Space Telescope have determined that two potential Dyson Sphere candidates are actually background galaxies. The findings highlight the challenges of identifying technosignatures in deep space.
Why it matters
This study refines the search for extraterrestrial intelligence by demonstrating how background noise can mimic advanced alien megastructures.
The latest Swedish-led search for technosignatures in the form of Dyson Spheres has again come up empty-handed. The two latest stellar candidates in the hunt for such hypothetical extraterrestrial technology have been eliminated as Dyson Spheres.
Project Hephaistos, an Uppsala University-led initiative, used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to observe two new Dyson Sphere candidates. The Webb telescope took imaging and spectroscopy of two M-dwarf stars, as noted in two papers recently submitted to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS) .
Dyson spheres are hypothetical megastructures constructed around stars to harvest radiation energy, possibly for the purpose of powering habitats, vessel propulsion, computing or transmitting long-range signals, the MNRAS authors note. The primary technosignature of such structures is the waste heat emitted, usually assumed to be detectable as excess radiation in the infrared, they write.
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