Saturday 29 October 2016

dyson sphere or cepheid variable

SETI, after receiving a significant grant from a wealthy donor, is turning its focus on a very particular and peculiar target—a star whose notice first caught the attention of astrophysicist Tabetha Boyajian (hence Tabby’s Star) for its strange peaks and dips in brightness.
These changes in luminosity are too drastic and irregular to be caused by transiting planets and has caused some to suggest that the star harbours around it an alien megastructure, which either partially or fully encloses the host star to capture all of the radiation it emits. The hypothetical engineering was elaborated by mathematician Freeman Dyson as the inevitable consequence of technological advance and the need for sustainable energy. Civilisations, faced with the prospect of being host to a dying or unstable sun, may even cling unseen and shielded from the Cosmos beyond to the inside surface of a sphere that’s been built to completely surround the star at the right distance to sustain life and utilities but perhaps over the รฆons, the diameter of the enclosure shrinks to grow closer to the flickering heat. I wonder how those later generations, distantly removed from the original project, might think of their Universe.