[ExI] NASA doubts Dyson megastructures will ever be necessary

[Keith Henson]

On Sat, Aug 17, 2024 at 4:24 AM BillK via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> NASA Scientists on Why We Might Not Spot Solar Panel Technosignatures
> William Steigerwald      August 2, 2024.
>
> <https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/planetary-science/astrobiology/nasa-scientists-on-why-we-might-not-spot-solar-panel-technosignatures/>
>
> Quotes:
> Now a recent paper published May 24 in the Astrophysical Journal
> postulates that if advanced extraterrestrial civilizations exist, one
> reason they might be hard to detect with telescopes from our vantage
> point is because their energy requirements may be relatively modest.
> If their culture, technology, and population size do not need vast
> amounts of power, they would not be required to build enormous
> stellar-energy harvesting structures that could be detected by current
> or proposed telescopes. Such structures, based on our own Earthly
> experience, might be solar panel arrays that cover a significant
> portion of their planet’s surface or orbiting megastructures to
> harness most of their parent star’s energy—both of which we might be
> able to spot from our own solar system.

Tabby's star and the 24 other blinking stars around it we can see with
existing telescopes.

The biggest dip corresponds to an object equal to over 400 times the
area of the Earth.  Even though it is way out from the star, it
intercepts 1.4 million times the total energy humans use.

snip

> Hmmm.  Yes, it does seem likely that advanced civs could have better
> methods of power generation than building huge Dyson space structures.
> And that makes the assumption that they would even require such
> vast amounts of power utilisation.

How big does a structure need to get to be considered a Dyson structure?

Keith

PS amusing, my great great grandmother was Mary Virginia Dyson.

> BillK
>
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