Alien power plants may be drawing energy from seven stars in our galaxy

Scientists say we could be seeing long-theorised ‘Dyson spheres’ – super-advanced alien technology that harbours the energy of suns and black holes

Scientists claim to have detected signs of a long-hypothesised alien power-generation technology in the Milky Way galaxy, hidden away in a trove of astronomical data.

These hypothetical “Dyson spheres” are mega structures that only extremely technologically advanced civilisations would be able to build, designed to draw energy from stars.

Researchers say they have developed a new way to look for signs of alien power generation in a project called Hephaistos, named after the Greek god of fire and metallurgy.

To start with, they analysed data collected by astronomical surveys Gaia DR3, 2MASS and WISE to flag Dyson sphere candidates in the Milky Way.

“In this study, we present a comprehensive search for partial Dyson spheres by analyzing optical and infrared observations from Gaia, 2MASS, and WISE,” the researchers write in a study published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

“A specialised pipeline has been developed to identify potential Dyson sphere candidates focusing on detecting sources that display anomalous infrared excesses that cannot be attributed to any known natural source of such radiation.”

Combing through data from about five million sources, the researchers built a catalogue of potential Dyson spheres.

They looked at signs of partially completed alien megastructures which could emit excess infrared radiation.

“This structure would emit waste heat in the form of mid-infrared radiation that, in addition to the level of completion of the structure, would depend on its effective temperature,” they write.

Such energy, however, can also be emitted by natural objects in the universe such as stellar dust rings and nebulae.

Of the five million energy sources they looked at, the researchers zeroed in on seven as potential Dyson spheres.

“All sources are clear mid-infrared emitters with no clear contaminators or signatures that indicate an obvious mid-infrared origin,” they write, adding that these sources are still just candidates.

Indeed, the excess radiation could be coming from warm debris disks surrounding these seven candidates, including red dwarf stars.

“We found seven apparent M dwarfs exhibiting an infrared excess of unclear nature that is compatible with our Dyson sphere models,” they write.

“Additional analyses are definitely necessary to unveil the true nature of these sources.”