Posted on by Mark Thompson

New Technique for Spotting Dyson Rings Unveiled.

Artist's impression of a Dyson Sphere. The construction of such a massive engineering structure would create a technosignature that could be detected by humanity. Credit: SentientDevelopments.com/Eburacum45
Artist's impression of a Dyson Sphere. The construction of such a massive engineering structure would create a technosignature that could be detected by humanity. Credit: SentientDevelopments.com/Eburacum45

Dyson spheres and rings have always held a special fascination for me. The concept is simple, build a great big structure either as a sphere or ring to harness the energy from a star. Dyson rings are far more simple and feasible to construct and in a recent paper, a team of scientists explore how we might detect them by analysing the light from distant stars. The team suggests they might be able to detect Dyson rings around pulsars using their new technique.

Continue reading “New Technique for Spotting Dyson Rings Unveiled.”
Posted on by Fraser Cain

When Will Humanity Become a Type III Civilization?

When Will We Be a Type III Civilization?

Now, I’m no futurist, but I think I can predict one thing. Humans love to use energy, and in the future, we’re going to use even more of the stuff.

Let’s hope it’s clean energy, like that handy source of photons in the sky: the Sun. Not dirty forms of energy, like screams, unobtainium, liquid Shwartz, or using humans as batteries.

Credit: Pawel Maryanov
A cleaner form of energy than screams. Most things are. Credit: Pawel Maryanov

Once we really get our hands on a clean, unlimited source of energy, you can expect our usage to grow and grow until every human on Earth is using as much energy as a small country.

Continue reading “When Will Humanity Become a Type III Civilization?”