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Those interested in astronomy are familiar with the fascinating concept of Dyson Sphere. The concept, described by Physicist Freeman Dyson in his research paper in 1960 put forth a fascinating thought experiment that advanced alien civilisations would build an enclosure (Dyson Sphere) around their host star in order to fulfil their energy needs. Building of such a megastructure would be necessary for that civilisation since its energy needs would surpass what their host planet is able to provide. Dyson had proposed that while searching for alien life in the Universe, we should keep an eye out for such megastructures as they can be indicative of the alien civilisation that built them.

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But now a team of researchers from India has proposed an alternative approach to finding alien civilisations in a study.

As reported by ScienceAlert, the research was led by Raghav Narsimha, a physics graduate student from Christ University in Bengaluru. Narsimha was joined by Chandra Sivaram, professor at Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIAP) and Margarita Safonova, a scientist from IIAP.

The megastructures, like Dyson Sphere, if they are built are likely to have some effect on the star when it is looked upon from distance. For example, the star may inexplicably dim when looked from Earth. Such possible endeavors by alien civilisations are also likely to leave 'technosignatures' or 'tell-tale' signed.

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The team from India has suggested that instead of looking for tell-tale signs of as difficult an endeavour as Dyson Sphere, we should look for technosignatures of some other kind.

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The team proposes that pulling other planets into the habitable zone of the star to use the resources or to use them as planetary real estate would be less cumbersome than building full-fledged megastructures that encapsulate the entire star.

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For this, says the team in its study, the alien civilisation would need immensely powerful lasers. We are talking about moving planets here. And the 'spill-over' energy signature from these lasers would be the technosignature we would need to look for while hunting aliens, says the team.

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The pre-print of this study titled 'Making Habitable Worlds: Planets Versus Megastructures' is available on pre-print server Arxiv and it is being reviewed for publication in the journal Astrophysics and Space Science.

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