I find it incredible, that we can generate some reasonable observations which could indicate the presence of intelligent life…it may not be there, but the mere possibility fills me with awe
The real explanation will probably turn out to be dust. There was a lot of hype like this about Tabby's star several years ago. Surely a Dyson sphere would need enormous amounts of refined material (metals, semiconductors, glass).
I don’t know how thin the solar panels can be constructed. But let’s say it would be possible to construct, I’d really try to make it as natural appearing as possible
Good job SETI! I will be doing an episode on this on my podcast, "Universe-ity" on Spotify and Apple Podcasts later this week. Thanks for all your great thoughts!
the problem i have with dyson spheres is that a civilization that can build such a massive structure already probably knows how to produce fusion energy.. it would be much more efficient to build many small fusion reactors than envelope a star with some primitive "solar cells" for photons when you can go straight to the source of the power.
We understand the composition of the Sun, which includes metals like iron and magnesium among other elements. By following the recipe and adding these to a containment area, then igniting it, we wouldn't need an entire star-just a new mixture. These stars could be smaller and easier to manage with less heat. We have now inherited four Dysons and one central facility, Yorktown. Brace yourselves, SETI; you're in for a wild ride.
I don’t know how thin the solar panels can be constructed. But let’s say it would be possible to construct, I’d really try to make it as natural appearing as possible, if I was the alien civilization
Let me just elaborate Dyson sphere means we are watching type 2 civilisation harvesting its energy from its own Sun ☀️ Type1 civilisation: where we can use full energy from earth resources for our energy utilisation and for our needs Type 2 civilization:means Dyson sphere structure for energy harvesting Type 3 civilisation : means we can use Galaxy stars . Even black hole etc. Above there are type 4 type 5 type 6 are been classified depend upon energy utilisation of any civilisation.
Well presented and interesting discussion. However I would need to be certain every potential natural explanation had been investigated and conclusively discounted before entertaining possible ETI causes.
That's why the stars in the papers are candidates instead of hits. Also part of the scope of SETI activities is discovering and modelling previously unknown natural phenomena, If you look at many previous videos, you will see that what you say is more or less the working attitude of scientists in the area, starting from the prior "this is extremely unlikely to be aliens" and working down from known mechanisms.
We agree, and as mentioned in the video, further experiments are necessary. One of the simplest approaches would be to obtain spectra using the JWST or other IR-optimized telescopes.
learning from the literatures and fictions we’ve read/seen, _are_ we ready for extraterrestrial civilizations? well sure men in black might exist but we’re talking about something that only appears in star trek/star wars/hitchhiker’s guide
You are correct, lasers do indeed happen in nature but they are rarely stable over a long period of time. It will probably the topic of video in the future. Thank you!
I am convinced that if a civilization has the knowledge and the knowhow to build a dyson sphere, that nuclear fusion has no secrets to them anymore. So that they can build their own infinite power sources on their planet or on a satellite powerplant circling their planet without the need of building an extreme megalomaniac project like a dyson sphere around a star.
At any reasonable distance from a star it's always going to be easier to throw up a solar array to capture the energy from the giant fusion reactor that's already there than to build you're own. Keep doing that for long enough, and you're going to block a significant portion of its radiation. in it's original conception, hat's all a Dyson's sphere is.
If they have built dyson sphere in space will it not effect gravity between sun and alien species planet . Let the mass of sun =500000 Let The mass of Dyson sphere=500000 Add both values=1000000 kg with this will not effect their own planet questions need to asked.
I never understood why a Dyson sphere would be necessary when panels in space can collect more than enough energy for our needs (think ISS). Shouldn't we be looking for unusually dim planets instead?
wouldn't there need to be a habitable planet in the system,... wouldn't the structure be insanely massive if you could spot it from the jwst or other telescope (i know a dyson sphere is massive but, it seems like it would be maybe smaller and have a more structured shape, maybe something net-like in appearance rather than a ring)
If you're living on a planet, maybe. But if you're living in a billion space habitats made by mining asteroids into engineering materials ... who needs a planet? You're going to need a LOT of materials for your Dyson sphere, so why not cut up your planet? (Obviously, a majority of the voting population would need to live in space, or not on the planet. But if it's a 1-man, 1 vote system, that's not a problem.)
What if 'they' are not millions of years ahead of 'us'? We have some wild technology that has not even been publicly released and never will. Your mind would be blown, at least mine is. IMO even advanced aliens would be spooked at our tech compared to our primtive nature.
@@kyus1974 But where do the raw resources come from the actual building material? You could mine every planet in the solar system and still not have enough, you could capture every meteorite and still not have enough do you even realize the size of a star, and what about the gravitational effect there are so many things wrong with this idea it becomes science fiction. Suited for a comic book but not real science.
@@voodoojedizin4353 Someone crunched the numbers and showed that you "just" need to deconstruct Mercury to make a dyson sphere around the sun. Which is *physically* possible but probably not practical for humans for at least a thousand years.
If you atomised Venus, you'd get a Dyson sphere with a wall thickness of a few millimetres - it's actually difficult to calculate without an arbitrary-precision calculator. So ... I got an arbitrary calculator, and learned how to use it. Your "Venus_as_Dyson_Sphere" sphere would be a shell, in approximately Earth's orbit, and 0.00000330150 km thick . Since the original data I used only had 4 significant figures, I've discarded 40 "insignificant" digits from the output. Source code available. In "freedom units" (freedom from the Imperial dictats of an unelected foreign power ; not freedom form sanity), that's a 3 mm thick shell. OK, 3.3 mm. Your "Venusian Dyson sphere would have a structural integrity (and radiation protection) on a par with my stronger toenail clippings. I suppose I'd better re-do the calculations for the other *measured* planets. It's not that complex when you work out the method. Always putting the resultant Dyson sphere in the Earth's orbit, and working purely from the volumes ; converting the matter involved into appropriate elements is left, as the saying goes, as an exercise for the reader. Calculations re-done. Jupiter could get up to a interesting wall-thickness of a few metres. At about Earth's orbit. The problems of bulk transmutation remain in your court. YT doesn't have an option for monospaced fonts, do they? The table is neatly aligned in monospace. Assigning values for other planets and the Earth's moon. Name Mercury Earth Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune R (km) 2439.5 6371.0 1737.1 3396.0 71492.0 60268.0 25559.0 24764.0 Dyson shell (km) Mercury : .00000021623103424157 Dyson shell (km) Earth : .00000385157512741951 Dyson shell (km) Moon : .00000007807104977223 Dyson shell (km) Mars : .00000058333576310447 Dyson shell (km) Jupiter : .00544236792380366022 Dyson shell (km) Saturn : .00326043763127107444 Dyson shell (km) Uranus : .00024868359225174970 Dyson shell (km) Neptune : .00022619236644967332
If we listened to closed-minded naysayers, like yourself, we would never have invented airplanes, cars, telephones, satellites, etc. We may not have even come out of our caves if we had listened to that kind of negativity. Ignore that person's comment and keeping searching and learning!
One problem with all the searching of “advanced “ civilisation is the point of view we have on it . Looking for radio, for lasers for Dyson spheres and all the things that we can imagine from our tech level perspective. So we are expecting for an advanced civilisation to still use technology that we are using now ???? I can not imagine how this could work . Also speaking about civilisation is even uncertain, we simply don’t know what direction life would evolve into and where does it going to take the energy from and if energy at all … uncertainty over uncertainty. The only thing I can imagine we would find ( with some luck one day) is some remaining left overs from their/ its evolutionary path that are somewhere on our tech level now …
Douglas Adams answered this decades ago, in his style. The answer is "teasers". Alternatively, the small, furry, Alpha Centaurian equivalents of ham-radio enthusiasts and anthropologists.
Hello statistics, there is moderate adavanced ( so far ) civilization on planet called Earth, not because its very special, but because there are plenty of earth-like planet in the Universe ;)
Just a theory but maybe they have uses for Dyson spheres we haven’t thought of yet. My theory is they might be used to transfer power from one star to another.
@@GarrickHolmed ... which would mean an abnormal luminosity for the recipient star (the donor possibly becoming too dim to measure). Which would stick out like an excessively luminous star for it's other spectral characteristics, and be red-flagged in any of our more recent, higher precision all-sky surveys. Of course, there is a whole zoo of potential candidate causes for such deviation from normality. Thorne-Ẑytkow objects were just one such theoretical object that has recently had a possible real-life example discovered. What would be the benefit of transferring power, which you couldn't achieve more easily by just going to the "donor" star to do whatever you wanted the power for?
Come on Guys, to be able to create or build a "Dyson" sphere, it would need a Planet with the mass of minimal 25 times the size of the Star to produce the required material to build a Dyson around the Star.
Dyson sphere is a stupid idea. No one can built something which is bigger than their planet or star, because materials needed for such constructions will be inadequate from their parent planet
@@apngeram ever heard of not extrapolating nonsense concepts of a toddler civilization onto ones millions of years ahead of us. Dyson spheres would be childish and inefficient to them.
@@jaz4742 I didn’t say the Dyson spheres would be or would not be efficient to a highly advanced civilization. I just pointed out that space mining is just a potential way to gather resources.
@@jaz4742 How would you know whether or not a potential civilization wouldn’t need to harness the power of a star? Do you really know so much about science and futurism so could speculate from a higher level of authority, especially when many well respected physicists and astronomers are speculating on this very idea?
@colonelleblanc2594 because i dont fall for the trap of thinking that we, the toddlers who just got started, know what civilizations millions of years ahad of us are doing or have discovered in terms of energy. Empty space has more energy than stars. And even that would be childish for them. Dyson Spheres are an ancient silly idea. Like cavemen thinking they cant cross an ocean because nobody could swim it. Without knowing about boats or planes.
We are scientists and proudly stand by our work without hiding our identity. Unlike you, we focus on constructive dialogue and respect others' efforts. This channel welcomes constructive contributions, not trolls. Goodbye.
@@AllPlanets I hate to pop your bubble but I'm not the only one that thinks this way, listening for extraterrestrial radio signals is one thing. But this and some of your other shows fall into the category of the {history channel} kind of show, along with ancient alien technology and alien abductions. I know of many people who followed your work, who then turned away when you started getting into science fiction instead of science fact.
The chance of keeping a credible discovery quiet for the nominal "few days" of checking is pretty slender. Someone would either blab, or notice that everyone else was being stonily silent for no obvious reason. Remember how the story of the "life on Martian meteorite ALH84001" broke? Some politician was poking his mid-week prostitute and blabbed to her. Or was it "him"? Whatever ; unimportant. The news would leak.
This is pure fantasy. You'd need the perfect evolution of the species and in the perfect star system that had all the materials necessary and they were within range of the home planet. This is Star Trek bs click bait.
But, but, but, can you create a technology to raise the standard UFO photo quality above 18 dpi?
😆 maybe the ufos are just naturally blurry like bigfoot and nessy. JK
I find it incredible, that we can generate some reasonable observations which could indicate the presence of intelligent life…it may not be there, but the mere possibility fills me with awe
this is a good length and format for this type of information!!!
You should do much more videos like this. Well done.
That's the plan!
Just what this channel needs more science fiction, instead of more science.
The real explanation will probably turn out to be dust. There was a lot of hype like this about Tabby's star several years ago. Surely a Dyson sphere would need enormous amounts of refined material (metals, semiconductors, glass).
I don’t know how thin the solar panels can be constructed. But let’s say it would be possible to construct, I’d really try to make it as natural appearing as possible
great video, great discussion, great paper references, keep it up!
Good job SETI! I will be doing an episode on this on my podcast, "Universe-ity" on Spotify and Apple Podcasts later this week. Thanks for all your great thoughts!
Sounds great! Please send us the link so that we can share it out to our audience as well.
the problem i have with dyson spheres is that a civilization that can build such a massive structure already probably knows how to produce fusion energy.. it would be much more efficient to build many small fusion reactors than envelope a star with some primitive "solar cells" for photons when you can go straight to the source of the power.
I had a similar thought... or perhaps they know how physics works better than us and don't even need fusion reactors.
We understand the composition of the Sun, which includes metals like iron and magnesium among other elements. By following the recipe and adding these to a containment area, then igniting it, we wouldn't need an entire star-just a new mixture. These stars could be smaller and easier to manage with less heat. We have now inherited four Dysons and one central facility, Yorktown. Brace yourselves, SETI; you're in for a wild ride.
I don’t know how thin the solar panels can be constructed. But let’s say it would be possible to construct, I’d really try to make it as natural appearing as possible, if I was the alien civilization
This is exciting, definitely.
Let me just elaborate Dyson sphere means we are watching type 2 civilisation harvesting its energy from its own Sun ☀️
Type1 civilisation: where we can use full energy from earth resources for our energy utilisation and for our needs
Type 2 civilization:means Dyson sphere structure for energy harvesting
Type 3 civilisation : means we can use Galaxy stars . Even black hole etc.
Above there are type 4 type 5 type 6 are been classified depend upon energy utilisation of any civilisation.
Well presented and interesting discussion. However I would need to be certain every potential natural explanation had been investigated and conclusively discounted before entertaining possible ETI causes.
That's why the stars in the papers are candidates instead of hits. Also part of the scope of SETI activities is discovering and modelling previously unknown natural phenomena, If you look at many previous videos, you will see that what you say is more or less the working attitude of scientists in the area, starting from the prior "this is extremely unlikely to be aliens" and working down from known mechanisms.
We agree, and as mentioned in the video, further experiments are necessary. One of the simplest approaches would be to obtain spectra using the JWST or other IR-optimized telescopes.
The real question here is, who's behind those two black crates on the right?
learning from the literatures and fictions we’ve read/seen, _are_ we ready for extraterrestrial civilizations? well sure men in black might exist but we’re talking about something that only appears in star trek/star wars/hitchhiker’s guide
Lasers and masers do occur in nature, in planetary and circumstellar astronomy, but are rare and usually easily explained by the context.
You are correct, lasers do indeed happen in nature but they are rarely stable over a long period of time. It will probably the topic of video in the future. Thank you!
Quick, go there and rescue Scotty from the transporter buffer! 🖖
I am convinced that if a civilization has the knowledge and the knowhow to build a dyson sphere, that nuclear fusion has no secrets to them anymore. So that they can build their own infinite power sources on their planet or on a satellite powerplant circling their planet without the need of building an extreme megalomaniac project like a dyson sphere around a star.
At any reasonable distance from a star it's always going to be easier to throw up a solar array to capture the energy from the giant fusion reactor that's already there than to build you're own. Keep doing that for long enough, and you're going to block a significant portion of its radiation. in it's original conception, hat's all a Dyson's sphere is.
If they have built dyson sphere in space will it not effect gravity between sun and alien species planet .
Let the mass of sun =500000
Let The mass of Dyson sphere=500000
Add both values=1000000 kg with this will not effect their own planet questions need to asked.
I was really excited about this news until Dr. Sgro mentioned the Kuiper Belt stuff... That is a much better explanation than a Dyson Sphere.
I never understood why a Dyson sphere would be necessary when panels in space can collect more than enough energy for our needs (think ISS). Shouldn't we be looking for unusually dim planets instead?
These Dyson's would as the person they are named after also thought, would most probably be spherical as to envelope the whole orbit of the host star.
This is an awesome possibility, could the excess radiation a by product of space travel in this area?
Truly advanced beings would have overcome and denounced *greed* and would call Dyson Spheres *barbaric*.
wouldn't there need to be a habitable planet in the system,... wouldn't the structure be insanely massive if you could spot it from the jwst or other telescope (i know a dyson sphere is massive but, it seems like it would be maybe smaller and have a more structured shape, maybe something net-like in appearance rather than a ring)
If you're living on a planet, maybe. But if you're living in a billion space habitats made by mining asteroids into engineering materials ... who needs a planet? You're going to need a LOT of materials for your Dyson sphere, so why not cut up your planet?
(Obviously, a majority of the voting population would need to live in space, or not on the planet. But if it's a 1-man, 1 vote system, that's not a problem.)
Wouldn't we be receiving all kinds of radio chatter etc. first ?
We may not have yet listen to those stars in radio. There are 400 billion stars in our galaxy and we listened to less than 100 million so far.
Why would civilizations millions of years ahead of us be using radio lol? Seti is a joke.
What if 'they' are not millions of years ahead of 'us'? We have some wild technology that has not even been publicly released and never will. Your mind would be blown, at least mine is. IMO even advanced aliens would be spooked at our tech compared to our primtive nature.
How much energy is needed to build a dyson sphere and is it worth it?
The energy to build would also be coming from the host star.
@@kyus1974 But where do the raw resources come from the actual building material?
You could mine every planet in the solar system and still not have enough, you could capture every meteorite and still not have enough do you even realize the size of a star, and what about the gravitational effect there are so many things wrong with this idea it becomes science fiction. Suited for a comic book but not real science.
@@voodoojedizin4353 Someone crunched the numbers and showed that you "just" need to deconstruct Mercury to make a dyson sphere around the sun. Which is *physically* possible but probably not practical for humans for at least a thousand years.
remember.these things were existing when dinosaurs walked the earth..even if the are ds"s they are forever away in time and space.
My money is on dyson sphere ngl
Are they looking for Borg Cubes too?
That onerous mission has been assigned to the Screen Writers Guild.
If we atomize Venus, we can construct one here.
If you atomised Venus, you'd get a Dyson sphere with a wall thickness of a few millimetres - it's actually difficult to calculate without an arbitrary-precision calculator. So ... I got an arbitrary calculator, and learned how to use it. Your "Venus_as_Dyson_Sphere" sphere would be a shell, in approximately Earth's orbit, and 0.00000330150 km thick . Since the original data I used only had 4 significant figures, I've discarded 40 "insignificant" digits from the output. Source code available.
In "freedom units" (freedom from the Imperial dictats of an unelected foreign power ; not freedom form sanity), that's a 3 mm thick shell. OK, 3.3 mm.
Your "Venusian Dyson sphere would have a structural integrity (and radiation protection) on a par with my stronger toenail clippings.
I suppose I'd better re-do the calculations for the other *measured* planets. It's not that complex when you work out the method. Always putting the resultant Dyson sphere in the Earth's orbit, and working purely from the volumes ; converting the matter involved into appropriate elements is left, as the saying goes, as an exercise for the reader.
Calculations re-done. Jupiter could get up to a interesting wall-thickness of a few metres. At about Earth's orbit. The problems of bulk transmutation remain in your court.
YT doesn't have an option for monospaced fonts, do they? The table is neatly aligned in monospace.
Assigning values for other planets and the Earth's moon.
Name Mercury Earth Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune
R (km) 2439.5 6371.0 1737.1 3396.0 71492.0 60268.0 25559.0 24764.0
Dyson shell (km) Mercury : .00000021623103424157
Dyson shell (km) Earth : .00000385157512741951
Dyson shell (km) Moon : .00000007807104977223
Dyson shell (km) Mars : .00000058333576310447
Dyson shell (km) Jupiter : .00544236792380366022
Dyson shell (km) Saturn : .00326043763127107444
Dyson shell (km) Uranus : .00024868359225174970
Dyson shell (km) Neptune : .00022619236644967332
@@a.karley4672 The Earth does not need to be within the sphere for the theoretical technology to work.
There are no Dyson spheres and there will never be any Dyson spheres or Halo rings or anything similar. They can't be built.
Your brain is definitely one sided
If we listened to closed-minded naysayers, like yourself, we would never have invented airplanes, cars, telephones, satellites, etc. We may not have even come out of our caves if we had listened to that kind of negativity.
Ignore that person's comment and keeping searching and learning!
@@juliat4908 get help
@@juliat4908 it was mainly to the fact saying they can’t be built we honestly do not know that answer and may never know
There's gotta be a bunch of things we haven't thought of, and just because we can imagine a Dyson Sphere doesn't mean it's possible.
One problem with all the searching of “advanced “ civilisation is the point of view we have on it . Looking for radio, for lasers for Dyson spheres and all the things that we can imagine from our tech level perspective. So we are expecting for an advanced civilisation to still use technology that we are using now ???? I can not imagine how this could work . Also speaking about civilisation is even uncertain, we simply don’t know what direction life would evolve into and where does it going to take the energy from and if energy at all … uncertainty over uncertainty. The only thing I can imagine we would find ( with some luck one day) is some remaining left overs from their/ its evolutionary path that are somewhere on our tech level now …
Douglas Adams answered this decades ago, in his style. The answer is "teasers".
Alternatively, the small, furry, Alpha Centaurian equivalents of ham-radio enthusiasts and anthropologists.
Hello seti. Hello advanced alien civilizations. Hello Occam’s Razor.
Hello statistics, there is moderate adavanced ( so far ) civilization on planet called Earth, not because its very special, but because there are plenty of earth-like planet in the Universe ;)
Most popular comment on this channel: no.
😂
I doubt it.
I may never find evidence of civilisation anywhere in the Universe concurrent with another credible.
Any civilization advanced enough to build a Dyson sphere wouldn't need one
Just a theory but maybe they have uses for Dyson spheres we haven’t thought of yet. My theory is they might be used to transfer power from one star to another.
@@GarrickHolmed ... which would mean an abnormal luminosity for the recipient star (the donor possibly becoming too dim to measure). Which would stick out like an excessively luminous star for it's other spectral characteristics, and be red-flagged in any of our more recent, higher precision all-sky surveys.
Of course, there is a whole zoo of potential candidate causes for such deviation from normality. Thorne-Ẑytkow objects were just one such theoretical object that has recently had a possible real-life example discovered.
What would be the benefit of transferring power, which you couldn't achieve more easily by just going to the "donor" star to do whatever you wanted the power for?
Come on Guys, to be able to create or build a "Dyson" sphere, it would need a Planet with the mass of minimal 25 times the size of the Star to produce the required material to build a Dyson around the Star.
Dyson sphere is a stupid idea. No one can built something which is bigger than their planet or star, because materials needed for such constructions will be inadequate from their parent planet
Ever heard of space mining?
@@apngeram ever heard of not extrapolating nonsense concepts of a toddler civilization onto ones millions of years ahead of us. Dyson spheres would be childish and inefficient to them.
@@jaz4742 I didn’t say the Dyson spheres would be or would not be efficient to a highly advanced civilization. I just pointed out that space mining is just a potential way to gather resources.
@@jaz4742 How would you know whether or not a potential civilization wouldn’t need to harness the power of a star?
Do you really know so much about science and futurism so could speculate from a higher level of authority, especially when many well respected physicists and astronomers are speculating on this very idea?
@colonelleblanc2594 because i dont fall for the trap of thinking that we, the toddlers who just got started, know what civilizations millions of years ahad of us are doing or have discovered in terms of energy. Empty space has more energy than stars. And even that would be childish for them. Dyson Spheres are an ancient silly idea. Like cavemen thinking they cant cross an ocean because nobody could swim it. Without knowing about boats or planes.
Shows like these are one reason a lot of people don't take the SETI Institute seriously!
We are scientists and proudly stand by our work without hiding our identity. Unlike you, we focus on constructive dialogue and respect others' efforts. This channel welcomes constructive contributions, not trolls. Goodbye.
@@AllPlanets I hate to pop your bubble but I'm not the only one that thinks this way, listening for extraterrestrial radio signals is one thing. But this and some of your other shows fall into the category of the {history channel} kind of show, along with ancient alien technology and alien abductions. I know of many people who followed your work, who then turned away when you started getting into science fiction instead of science fact.
Are you allowed to tell us if you find aliens?
The chance of keeping a credible discovery quiet for the nominal "few days" of checking is pretty slender. Someone would either blab, or notice that everyone else was being stonily silent for no obvious reason.
Remember how the story of the "life on Martian meteorite ALH84001" broke? Some politician was poking his mid-week prostitute and blabbed to her. Or was it "him"? Whatever ; unimportant. The news would leak.
You mustn't of been watching because the aliens are already here!
This is pure fantasy. You'd need the perfect evolution of the species and in the perfect star system that had all the materials necessary and they were within range of the home planet. This is Star Trek bs click bait.
Infinite possibilities exist and are happening at every moment
@@alleneatsfruit No, the Vulcan saying is "Infinite diversity in infinite combinations." 🖖
Prove it.
Looking forward to reading your Phd thesis on this topic.