{"id":134942,"date":"2022-01-30T14:22:58","date_gmt":"2022-01-30T22:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/astronomers-suggest-a-surprising-new-way-to-detect-alien-megastructures"},"modified":"2022-01-30T14:22:58","modified_gmt":"2022-01-30T22:22:58","slug":"astronomers-suggest-a-surprising-new-way-to-detect-alien-megastructures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/astronomers-suggest-a-surprising-new-way-to-detect-alien-megastructures","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers Suggest a Surprising New Way to Detect Alien Megastructures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QnFAQrR58SY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>How do you power a super advanced <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2021\/06\/27\/fermi-paradox-heres-what-an-alien-civilization-settling-the-galaxy-looks-like\/\">alien civilization<\/a>? Soak up a star.<\/p>\n<p>We harness the power of the sun using solar panels. What if you were to scale this idea to astronomical proportions? Surround an entire star with solar-collecting structures or satellites to power your sprawling alien galactic empire. Such massive structures are known as megastructures\u2014in this case a \u201cDyson sphere.\u201d We are already trying to detect possible megastructures in <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/tag\/space\/\">space<\/a> using the dimming of a star and the glow of megastructure components in infrared light. But recent research provides a new detection method\u2014a Dyson sphere may cause its host star to swell and cool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How do you power a super advanced alien civilization? Soak up a star. We harness the power of the sun using solar panels. What if you were to scale this idea to astronomical proportions? Surround an entire star with solar-collecting structures or satellites to power your sprawling alien galactic empire. Such massive structures are known [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1527,2028,1633,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alien-life","category-satellites","category-solar-power","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}