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! Credit: Star KIC 8462852: By NASA https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KIC_8462852_in_IR_and_UV.png Swarm of Comets: By NASA/JPL-Caltech https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Swarm_of_Comets_(Artist%27s_Concept).tif https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA20053 Exoplanet K2-18 b: By NASA / ESA / CSA / Joseph Olmsted (STScI) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Exoplanet_K2-18_b_(Illustration).jpg https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2023/139/01H9R88HG8YXRMARWZ5B1YDT27 Asteroid 2002 AA29: By NASA https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/earth-and-asteroid-play-orbital-cat-and-mouse-game Mars Atmosphere: By NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center / Howard Joe Witte / Sophia Roberts https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12045/ Venus Transit: By NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center / SDO https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10996/ CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en Pokrovsky shell: By Віщун https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pokrovsky_shell.png Dyson sphere in cutaway: By Віщун https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dyson_sphere_in_cutaway.png Frank Drake at Cornell: By Amalex5 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frank_Drake_at_Cornell,_October_2017.jpg Dyson sphere: By LoveEmployee, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dyson_sphere.png A radio telescope Un radiotélescope: By Gar Lunney / National Film Board of Canada Still Photography Division / Library and Archives Canada CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_radio_telescope_Un_radiotélescope_(46720461475).jpg Animation is created by Bright Side. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/ Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightside Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en Stock materials (photos, footages and other): https://www.depositphotos.com https://www.shutterstock.com https://www.eastnews.ru ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
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00:006. NASA is on the hunt for Dyson Spheres Turns out there are 60 stars that give off
00:07weird light patterns. This 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
00:20for Dyson Spheres. All forms of life, from microbes to us, need energy in order to survive.
00:27As living creatures keep evolving, their energy needs grow. We started with small fires, then
00:34moved on to coal, oil, and eventually solar panels.
00:39Now imagine a super-advanced civilization that has used up all the energy sources on
00:43its planet. What's next? Their hosts are an almost limitless power source. This is
00:50where the idea of Dyson Spheres comes in. It was made up by the physicist Freeman Dyson
00:56in the 1960s. This idea says that, hypothetically, we could build an incredibly big structure
01:03around a star to capture its energy, like some sort of gigantic solar panel. Advanced
01:09civilizations could use it to power their planet and even interstellar travel. Right
01:14now something like this would be impossible for us to build, but maybe someone else in
01:19the universe has managed to pull that off.
01:24Astronomers gathered lots of data from surveys of stars. They analyzed over 5 million objects
01:30and found some candidates. Of course, extraterrestrial civilizations might have completely different
01:36technology, so astronomers aren't looking for actual giant shells around stars. Instead,
01:43they're looking for technosignatures. These are weird things that might indicate the presence
01:49of something technological and can't be explained by known natural sources like galaxies
01:54or nebulae. For example, a structure like a Dyson Sphere could give off unusual infrared
02:02radiation. This is because, while absorbing a star's energy, this structure would give
02:08off crazy amounts of heat. Out of millions, they identified 368 potential candidates.
02:16Further filtering left them with only 7 objects that could be Dyson Spheres.
02:23Usually, 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-degree disks. The researchers think these 7 objects could be
02:43M-type stars, also called red dwarfs. These are stars that are very small on the space scale
02:49and a bit fainter than our Sun, a yellow dwarf. Stars like that don't usually have warm dust and
02:56rocks around them, but scientists need to do more tests, like looking at the light in detail,
03:01to be sure about their discovery. There was another study that found 53 star candidates
03:08with similar excess infrared radiation. But these also need to be checked. Scientists plan
03:14to use advanced tools like the James Webb Space Telescope to take a closer look at all these
03:19candidates. One famous candidate is Tabby's Star. Scientists even made a joking name for it because
03:27the paper about this star had the subtitle, Where's the Flux? Think of an acronym yourself!
03:33Now, it's a bit hotter and more massive than our Sun. It's caught NASA's attention because
03:38of its unusual irregular light dimming. For some reason, it doesn't glow like a normal star,
03:44but blinks, as if someone turns on and off a flashlight.
03:49At first, you might think this is just because some big planet is passing in front of it,
03:53or a comet. But we're talking up to a 22% drop in light. No planet could manage to eclipse a
04:00quarter of a star. And that's where the name comes in. So, another explanation is a Dyson
04:06sphere or some similar megastructure. Someone also suggested that the dips might be caused
04:12by fragments from a broken exomoon orbiting the star. There are other stars that show similar
04:19traits, but there's no solid evidence to support this. So for now, scientists just don't know.
04:26So, astronomers are on the hunt for any giant structures. There are many variations of what
04:31a Dyson sphere could look like. Rings, bubbles, a swarm of satellites, a giant shell, and 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. Also, if other civilizations built that
04:53thing, it would fully cover the star's light, and we simply wouldn't see it. The inner surface of
04:59this shell could be lined with habitats, and we could simulate gravity by rotating the structure
05:04around the sun. A Dyson swarm is the simplest option, a bunch of solar-collecting satellites
05:11and habitats orbiting the star. It would be a lovely place, with people living in many space
05:17stations or many space houses within the swarm. Each little habitat would have its own air,
05:22life support systems, and artificial gravity. We could also grow our little farms there.
05:28And imagine the view. We would see a constant bright sky with other habitats visible across
05:34the expanse. A near unlimited energy of a star would mean we could advance our technology very
05:41fast, manufacture tons of materials, and terraform planets within the star system.
05:48But building and maintaining a Dyson sphere would require advanced robotics,
05:52AI, and tons of money. It would take us centuries or millennia to get there.
05:59Giant megastructures aren't the only things that scientists are looking for
06:03in order to find extraterrestrial life. They also look at the planets.
06:09Planets must have certain characteristics to be potential homes. There should be liquid water
06:15and an energy source, something to drive these reactions, creating the building blocks of life.
06:22Turns out, such conditions aren't rare at all. Our search showed that there might be more than
06:2760 billion potential habitable planets in the Milky Way alone. Unfortunately, we can't look
06:34at them directly or land there. So we have to use tricks, like detecting water and good gases
06:41in their atmosphere. Recently, the James Webb Space Telescope found possible signs of life
06:48on a planet called K218b, which is pretty close, about 120 light-years from Earth.
06:55This planet is 9 times the size of Earth. It has clouds of liquid water but a different
07:01atmosphere, full of gases like methane, carbon dioxide, and dimethyl sulfide.
07:06Regular oxygen-breathing life wouldn't do well at all there, but on Earth,
07:11dimethyl sulfide is produced by life-forms like photoclankton.
07:17They also discovered that weird wiggly planets could be signs of advanced extraterrestrial
07:22civilizations. In our Solar System, each planet has its own orbit. But the Universe likes to
07:28surprise us. Surprise! Models 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,
07:39minimizing their gravitational impact on each other.
07:42Or the so-called horseshoe configuration, when planets speed up and slow down in relation to
07:48each other, moving in funny wiggly ways. These horseshoe systems can hold up to 24 planets.
07:55This is one of those things that are possible but very unlikely without some help. Normally,
08:01gravity would immediately destabilize such systems.
08:05This means that if we ever find a star system with 24 planets sharing orbits,
08:10it might indicate that some advanced civilization decided to lend a hand.
08:16They also might contact us themselves. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence began
08:22in the 1960s when astronomer Frank Drake started listening for radio signals from space.
08:29Today, they persist. Astronomers listen for leakage radiation from other civilizations,
08:35which are radio waves unintentionally sent into space from everyday activities. Recently,
08:41they detected radio waves from YZ Ceti 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
08:54for protecting life from the solar radiation. But YZ Ceti B is probably too close to its star
09:00to be habitable. But 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,
09:16making it easy for potential extraterrestrial astronomers to spot us.
09:21So, there are over a thousand star systems that could be watching us
09:24right now. And if we study them, we might one day find evidence of
09:29intelligent life looking back at us. Hello?
09:36That's it for today! So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and
09:41share it with your friends. Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright
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