What Are Alien Dyson Spheres, Why Are They So Janky, and Why Are They Doomed to Go Undetected?

In the 1960s, physicist Freeman Dyson proposed that advanced alien civilizations could be building enormous megastructures around a star to harness its energy. Such a move would allow a civilization to advance from a Type I to a Type II civilization on the Kardashev scale, harvesting the energy available from a star directly instead of from a given planet's surface. These shells, dubbed Dyson spheres, could be giving off distinct technosignatures, astronomers have suggested, making them observable, potentially, from many light-years away. But despite our best efforts, we have yet to make first contact, let alone with an alien-built megastructure siphoning off the energy released by a star. And, as New Scientist reports, there could be a good reason for that. According to Brian Lacki, a scientist involved with the Breakthrough Listen Initiative — which searches for evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations — Dyson spheres may destroy themselves long before we can encounter one. In ... Read full article.