Scientists have found dozens of stars that might be hosting advanced alien civilizations, and it’s got everyone super excited! These stars show unusual signals and patterns that could be signs of technology created by intelligent life. Researchers used powerful telescopes to spot these strange signals and are now studying them to see if they could really be coming from aliens. They’re being careful, though, because natural things in space can sometimes look like alien technology too. If any of these signals turn out to be the real deal, it could mean we’re not alone in the universe! It’s like a giant cosmic treasure hunt, and who knows what we might find!
00:04Turns out there are 60 stars that give off weird light patterns.
00:08This means there might be some extraterrestrial technology nearby.
00:15A team of scientists has developed a new way to search for advanced civilizations by looking for Dyson Spheres.
00:21All forms of life, from microbes to us, need energy in order to survive.
00:26As living creatures keep evolving, their energy needs grow.
00:31We started with small fires, then moved on to coal, oil, and eventually solar panels.
00:38Now imagine a super-advanced civilization that has used up all the energy sources on its planet.
00:44What's next?
00:46Their host star, an almost limitless power source.
00:50This is where the idea of Dyson Spheres comes in.
00:53It was made up by the physicist Freeman Dyson in the 1960s.
00:58This idea says that, hypothetically, we could build an incredibly big structure around a star to capture its energy, like some sort of gigantic solar panel.
01:09Advanced civilizations could use it to power their planet and even interstellar travel.
01:14Right now, something like this would be impossible for us to build.
01:18But maybe someone else in the universe has managed to pull that off.
01:21Scientists gathered lots of data from surveys of stars.
01:27They analyzed over 5 million objects and found some candidates.
01:32Of course, extraterrestrial civilizations might have completely different technology.
01:37So, astronomers aren't looking for actual giant shells around stars.
01:42Instead, they're looking for techno-signatures.
01:46These are weird things that might indicate the presence of something technological and can't be explained by known natural sources, like galaxies or nebula.
01:57For example, a structure like a Dyson Sphere could give off unusual infrared radiation.
02:02This is because, while absorbing a star's energy, this structure would give off crazy amounts of heat.
02:11Out of millions, they identified 368 potential candidates.
02:16Further filtering left them with only 7 objects that could be Dyson spheres.
02:20Now, usually, weird infrared flickering happens from giant crashes in space, like planetary collisions.
02:31Warmed-up dust and rocks get scattered around and give off strange lighting patterns.
02:37These are called extreme debris disks.
02:39The researchers think these 7 objects could be M-type stars, also called red dwarfs.
02:46These are stars that are very small on the space scale and a bit fainter than our sun, a yellow dwarf.
02:54Stars like that don't usually have warm dust and rocks around them.
02:57But scientists need to do more tests, like looking at the light in detail, to be sure about their discovery.
03:03There was another study that found 53 star candidates with similar excess infrared radiation.
03:11But these also need to be checked.
03:13Scientists plan to use advanced tools, like the James Webb Space Telescope, to take a closer look at all of these candidates.
03:21One famous candidate is Tabby's star.
03:25Scientists even made a joking name for it, because the paper about this star had the subtitle,
03:29Where's the Flux?
03:31Think of an acronym yourself.
03:33Now, it's a bit hotter and more massive than our sun.
03:36It's caught NASA's attention because of its unusual, irregular light dimming.
03:41For some reason, it doesn't glow like a normal star, but blinks, as if someone turns on and off a flashlight.
03:48At first, you might think this is just because some big planet is passing in front of it, or a comet.
03:54But we're talking up to a 22% drop in light.
03:58No planet could manage to eclipse a quarter of a star.
04:01And that's where the name comes in.
04:04So, another explanation is a Dyson sphere or some similar megastructure.
04:09Someone also suggested that the dips might be caused by fragments from a broken exomoon orbiting the star.
04:16There are other stars that show similar traits, but there's no solid evidence to support this.
04:22So, for now, scientists just don't know.
04:26So, astronomers are on the hunt for any giant structures.
04:30There are many variations of what a Dyson sphere could look like.
04:34Rings.
04:35Bubbles.
04:35A swarm of satellites.
04:38A giant shell.
04:39And so on.
04:41A Dyson shell would be a solid, rigid shell, completely enclosing the star.
04:46This is the most extreme option, the hardest one to build.
04:50Also, if other civilizations built that thing, it would fully cover the star's light, and we simply wouldn't see it.
04:57The inner surface of this shell could be lined with habitats, and we could simulate gravity by rotating the structure around the sun.
05:06A Dyson swarm is the simplest option.
05:09A bunch of solar-collecting satellites and habitats orbiting the star.
05:14It would be a lovely place, with people living in many space stations or many space houses within the swarm.
05:20Each little habitat would have its own air, life support systems, and artificial gravity.
05:25We could also grow our little farms there.
05:28And imagine the view.
05:30We would see a constant bright sky with other habitats visible across the expanse.
05:36A near-unlimited energy of a star would mean we could advance our technology very fast, manufacture tons of materials, and terraform planets within the star system.
05:46But building and maintaining a Dyson sphere would require advanced robotics, AI, and tons of money.
05:55It would take us centuries or millennia to get there.
05:59Giant megastructures aren't the only things that scientists are looking for in order to find extraterrestrial life.
06:06They also look at the planets.
06:07Now, planets must have certain characteristics to be potential homes.
06:13There should be liquid water and an energy source, something to drive these reactions, creating the building blocks of life.
06:22Turns out, such conditions aren't rare at all.
06:25Our search showed that there might be more than 60 billion potential habitable planets in the Milky Way alone.
06:31Unfortunately, we can't look at them directly or land there.
06:37So, we have to use tricks, like detecting water and good gases in their atmosphere.
06:43Recently, the James Webb Space Telescope found possible signs of life on a planet called K-218b, which is pretty close, about 120 light-years from Earth.
06:55This planet is nine times the size of Earth.
06:57It has clouds of liquid water, but a different atmosphere, full of gases like methane, carbon dioxide, and dimethyl sulfide.
07:07Regular oxygen-breathing life wouldn't do well at all there.
07:10But on Earth, dimethyl sulfide is produced by life forms like photoclankton.
07:17They also discovered that weird, wiggly planets could be signs of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations.
07:23In our solar system, each planet has its own orbit.
07:27But the universe likes to surprise us.
07:30Surprise!
07:31Models show that there might be planets that share the same orbit.
07:34For example, it's possible if the planets are evenly spaced around the star, minimizing their gravitational impact on each other.
07:42Or the so-called horseshoe configuration, when planets speed up and slow down in relation to each other, moving in funny, wiggly ways.
07:51These horseshoe systems can hold up to 24 planets.
07:54This is one of those things that are possible, but very unlikely, without some help.
08:00Normally, gravity would immediately destabilize such systems.
08:05This means that if we ever find a star system with 24 planets sharing orbits, it might indicate that some advanced civilization decided to lend a hand.
08:14The search for extraterrestrial intelligence began in the 1960s, when astronomer Frank Drake started listening for radio signals from space.
08:28Today, they persist.
08:31Astronomers listen for leakage radiation from other civilizations, which are radio waves unintentionally sent into space from everyday activities.
08:40Recently, they detected radio waves from YZ-SETI-B, a planet super close to us, just 12 light-years away.
08:49This means it might have a magnetic field, invisible shields that are very important for protecting life from the solar radiation.
08:57But YZ-SETI-B is probably too close to its star to be habitable.
09:01But there are a lot of places for such a signal to come from.
09:06It turns out, there are a thousand star systems in our galaxy where they can see us in the sky.
09:12All these stars have a perfect view of Earth passing in front of the Sun, making it easy for potential extraterrestrial astronomers to spot us.
09:21So, there are over a thousand star systems that could be watching us right now.
09:25And if we study them, we might one day find evidence of intelligent life looking back at us.
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