Scientist: Aliens May Harness Stars to Avoid Universal Expansion
The universe is expanding quickly. So, quickly that if we don’t do something, our galaxy will get left behind, as dark energy pushes us further into the infinite abyss. Luckily, this won’t happen for billions of years, but in the meantime, we may be able to find evidence of advanced alien civilizations that are planning for this catastrophe by harnessing the energy of neighboring stars.
At least that’s according to a new paper, published by senior scientist Dan Hooper at the Fermi National Accelerator Lab at the University of Chicago, proposing that we look for signs of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization pulling stars toward their home galaxy. Why? So, they can prevent themselves from being forever lost in the cosmic expansion.
Hooper’s theory is based on the hypothetical Kardashev scale, which laid out a series of technological advancements that delineate how advanced civilizations may progress. We currently sit below a Type I, unable to harness all of the energy on our planet, but hopefully we will someday move on to a Type II, in which we will be capable of harnessing the energy of our home star, the Sun.
But if there are other, older civilizations in the universe that have had a million more years of advancement, they may already be harvesting the energy of other stars in their galaxy and thinking about preventing their galactic isolation. This is the Type III civilization.
If that’s the case, these solar harvesters might leave evidence of their work in the night sky through light signatures or fluctuations, showing them dragging stars across the sky or through evidence suggesting a controlled depletion of a star’s energy.
Hooper imagines that these civilizations would, “use the energy that is harnessed to accelerate those stars away from the approaching horizon and toward the center of the civilization.”
Astrophysicists are still confounded by dark energy, having been unable to pinpoint and define precisely what it is. Dark energy is hypothesized to permeate all of space and is thought to be responsible for the expansion of the universe into the unknown.
Within 100 billion years, all stars beyond our Local Group will be pushed away, beyond the cosmic horizon, to the point they will no longer be visible from Earth. The same expansion will eventually happen to other galaxies and superclusters throughout the universe, unless a massively powerful force is able to prevent it.
So, if we’re able to get past the petty problems we currently face on Earth, in which we’re the biggest threat to our own survival, we’ll inevitably face larger issues, like getting lost in the depths of space.
In this episode of Deep Space we explore the potential evidence of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations forming a Dyson Sphere to harness the energy of stars:
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Harvard Professor Avi Loeb Says Universe Created in a Lab
One of the greatest mysteries of our universe is the question of what existed before the Big Bang and how our universe was created. Could it have been created in a lab by a higher form of intelligence—an extraterrestrial intelligence?
Scientists have studied for years the possibilities that may have created the Big Bang; how our universe was created. Now, Avi Loeb, Harvard Professor of Science and author of “extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth,” proposes in his latest editorial for Scientific American that our universe may have been created in a lab.
Modern physics has a problem, we do not yet have a good understanding of how to unify quantum mechanics and gravity. If we did, we could in theory figure out how to create a “Big Bang.” This idea led professor Loeb to his theory.
“If we imagine a civilization that had science and technology for much more than a century like we did, then they could have arrived at a theory that unifies quantum mechanics and gravity, and if they figure out how the Big Bang can be created perhaps they could also produce it themselves in the laboratory,” Loeb said. “And if that happens then there is a very interesting possibility, just like in nature, for example, a chick comes out of an egg, becomes a chicken and lays another egg, and so forth. You can imagine a universe like ours giving birth to an intelligent civilization that can create a universe like the one that made it.”
Imagine if different civilizations were given a letter grade; professor Loeb puts us at a Grade C, while the more advanced civilizations have higher grades.
“One can, in principle, classify civilizations in the universe into different classes. Type C civilization is similar to ours where we rely on the sun to keep us alive and we are using our environment the way it was provided to us. But then one can imagine a civilization Type B, which is not dependent on the star next to which it was born, in. fact it can create a habitat that supports its life far away from the star,” Loeb said.
“You can imagine them creating a platform where a civilization can live happily, using nuclear energy supplied to it from nuclear reactors and not from the star that it happens to be born next to, that would be Type B. Then Type A civilizations would be those that are capable of recreating the astrophysical environment that they live in, in particular, the universe as a whole. So, creating a universe in the laboratory implies that you’re at the top of the class of civilizations in the universe. We haven’t reached that yet because we don’t have a quantum theory of gravity.”
