Black holes could reveal the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations

A study published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society assumes that a hypothetical extraterrestrial civilization would be extracting energy from a black hole. This would occur from a collector called the Dyson Sphere, used when energy consumption exceeds the planet's capacity.

Read more:3 'absurd' Stephen Hawking theories that were true

Dyson Sphere

This sphere is built around the star and accumulates the energy present there. This concept came to be used from the theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson, in the 1960s. Thus, the researchers describe that “in this study, we considered that an energy source of a well-developed Type II or Type III civilization needs an energy source more powerful than its Sun itself”.

In addition, an accretion disk (structure composed of different materials that make an orbital movement around a central object), relative jets and a corona could be power plants with a lot of potential for a civilization like II.

Some researchers argue that for a stellar-mass black hole, even one with a low proportion of Eddigton, this disk can offer much more illuminating capacity than a star in the sequence main.

detect structures

According to some scientists, it would be completely possible to identify whether a Dyson Sphere would be close to a black hole. This could be due to the infrared emissions leaking out while the sphere is working to harvest energy from around the hole.

In addition, the sphere is also capable of collecting other types of energy, such as kinetic energy, for example, and not just electromagnetic energy. In this way, the total energy collected can be approximately five times greater than the common one, thus being able to detect these structures at different wavelengths, according to the researchers.