May 4, 2018 09:31 PM
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswitha...407f2e3138
EXCERPT: Perhaps the greatest 'holy grail' in all of astronomy is the search for life, and particularly intelligent life, beyond Earth. Given that life arose so plentifully and easily here on our home planet, and that the ingredients for life are everywhere we look throughout the Universe, it seems like a foregone conclusion that we wouldn't be alone.
The Milky Way, all on its own, has approximately 400 billion stars, each with its own unique history and chances for life to have arisen. Despite how technologically advanced humans have become, SETI searches have all come up empty, perhaps implying that technologically advanced civilizations aren't communicating in ways we would have thought. But an advanced-enough planet might have built a sphere around their Sun — a Dyson sphere — to harness 100% of its energy. Incredibly, we now have the technology to detect them. If, that is, they exist.
[...] The full extent of the Milky Way is difficult to determine from within our own galactic plane, but this map from ESA's Gaia is possibly the most comprehensive image of the galaxy and its stars ever composed. But this doesn't necessarily mean there aren't any [Dyson spheres]; it simply means that if they're out there, we haven't seen them yet. Dyson spheres could exist at greater distances, around smaller, lower-energy stars, or with larger diameters than Gaia is capable of detecting. Infrared observatories like WISE have placed major constraints on them, as well, and next-generation observatories that could potentially detect the waste-heat signature from such an object, like ESA's Euclid or NASA's WFIRST, will have the capability to search for these Dyson spheres out even farther...
MORE: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswitha...407f2e3138
EXCERPT: Perhaps the greatest 'holy grail' in all of astronomy is the search for life, and particularly intelligent life, beyond Earth. Given that life arose so plentifully and easily here on our home planet, and that the ingredients for life are everywhere we look throughout the Universe, it seems like a foregone conclusion that we wouldn't be alone.
The Milky Way, all on its own, has approximately 400 billion stars, each with its own unique history and chances for life to have arisen. Despite how technologically advanced humans have become, SETI searches have all come up empty, perhaps implying that technologically advanced civilizations aren't communicating in ways we would have thought. But an advanced-enough planet might have built a sphere around their Sun — a Dyson sphere — to harness 100% of its energy. Incredibly, we now have the technology to detect them. If, that is, they exist.
[...] The full extent of the Milky Way is difficult to determine from within our own galactic plane, but this map from ESA's Gaia is possibly the most comprehensive image of the galaxy and its stars ever composed. But this doesn't necessarily mean there aren't any [Dyson spheres]; it simply means that if they're out there, we haven't seen them yet. Dyson spheres could exist at greater distances, around smaller, lower-energy stars, or with larger diameters than Gaia is capable of detecting. Infrared observatories like WISE have placed major constraints on them, as well, and next-generation observatories that could potentially detect the waste-heat signature from such an object, like ESA's Euclid or NASA's WFIRST, will have the capability to search for these Dyson spheres out even farther...
MORE: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswitha...407f2e3138