Science: Earlier this year, scientists proposed that one of NASA’s spacecraft — the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE — may have discovered signals that could indicate the presence of megastructures used to collect the energy of stars. These so-called “Dyson spheres” would be a sign of highly advanced civilizations capable of making major changes to their planetary systems. Still, not everyone agreed on these discoveries, and one scientist working with WISE (the spacecraft was renamed “NEOWISE” in 2013) is determined to set the record straight. He suggests that the signals are more likely to represent dusty galaxies containing engulfed and hungry black holes that have been colorfully named “hot dogs.”
“As a mainstream WISE team member working on distant galaxies discovered by WISE, the frequent occasional mention of ‘Dyson spheres’ since launch has been an annoyance,” British astronomer and University of Leicester astronomer Andrew Blaine told Space.com. “Having a paper coming out over the summer saying ‘they’re here’ was finally too much!” As humanity is rapidly discovering, the price of being a technologically advanced civilization is associated with the vast energy demands that come with our inventions. But the primary energy source in any planetary system is its central star, which means that alien civilizations (if they exist, of course) could turn to their stars to directly harvest the stellar energy they need, preventing this energy from leaking into space and becoming unusable. A “Dyson sphere” is a hypothetical megastructure that could surround a star and directly harness its energy. This technique was first suggested by physicist Freeman Dyson in 1960. Since then, many scientists have been searching for these potential megastructures, reasoning that finding such a thing would be tantamount to discovering a highly advanced alien race.
