In 1960, physicist Freeman Dyson put forth a paper in Science that changed the way we talked about alien civilizations. In it, Dyson conjectured that a sufficiently advanced civilization would harness ...

In 1960, British theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson published a one-page paper in the journal Science that offered perhaps the most hopeful vision ever conceived of humanity’s technological future.

We’d need an astronomical amount of resources to construct a Dyson sphere, a giant theoretical shell that would harvest all of a given star’s energy, around the Sun. In fact, as science journalist ...

There are three ways to look for evidence of alien technological civilizations. One is to look out for deliberate attempts by them to communicate their existence, for example, through radio broadcasts ...

There are three ways to look for evidence of alien technological civilizations. One is to look out for deliberate attempts by them to communicate their existence, for example, through radio broadcasts ...

The gargantuan artificial construct enveloping your local star is going to be rather difficult to miss, even from a few light years away. And given the literally astronomical costs of resources needed ...

The Sphere would not gravitationally bind to its star in a stable fashion. This is perhaps counterintuitive; you might think that a perfect sphere around a star would be stable. But if any part of the ...

Side note: if we can build a structure around the sun, we won’t need local energy storage for said structure. Also, I’m with others in thinking a swarm is the way to go. Though I don’t think that ...

Time to update you on the hunt for galactic empires. On our search for alien lifeforms we scan for primitive biosignatures, and wait and hope for their errant signals to happen by the Earth. But that ...

Simon Goodwin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond ...