Last year, astronomers reported sightings of an 'alien megastructure' orbiting a distant star. Now, a scientist has suggested that spotting these megastructures could be relatively easy – as long as experts focus on the right places. He says that astronomers should turn their attention to 64 pulsar stars near our planet, which he believes offer the best chance of hosting an alien megastructure.
In 2015, astronomers spotted a star, known as Tabby's Star that could be seen mysteriously brightening and dimming. Several theories were suggested for this behaviour, with one expert suggesting that this 'winking' may have been caused by the rotation of an alien megastructure, called a Dyson's Sphere.
Now an astronomer from the Free University of Tbilisi, Georgia, is backing up this claim, and even says that the structures should be easy to spot with current technology. In a paper published last year, Professor Zaza Osmanov said the alien megastructures are more likely to be shaped like thin discs rather than 'spherical shells.'
If his theory is correct, this would allow a Dyson's Sphere to exist in a star's habitable zone and in his new paper, Professor Osmanov argues that if the Dyson's Sphere does exist in a habitable zone, it should be easy to spot using infrared telescopes.
Professor Osmanov is urging astronomers to focus their search on 64 pulsar stars. In his paper, published on arXiv, Professor Osmanov said:
'We have argued that by monitoring the nearby zone of the solar system approximately 64 pulsars are expected to be located inside it.'
But Professor Osmanov has warned that should we find the alien megastructure, it could be extremely powerful.
He said:
“Rapidly rotating pulsars are very powerful and harvesting their energy would be quite profitable, but a habitable zone would be much farther and mass of a material required for constructing the mega-ring would exceed the total mass of all planets, asteroids, comets, centaurs and interplanetary dust in a typical planetary system by several orders of magnitude.”
This suggests that an alien civilisation living on a megastructure could be strong enough to wipe out humanity.