UMass Research Used in Study to Identify Candidates for Dyson Spheres

Content

In the late ’90s/early ’00s, UMass contributed research to an astronomical survey known as the Two Micron All Sky Survey, or 2MASS. The data from this survey was recently used in a study that identified seven solar systems as possible candidates for hosting Dyson spheres—hypothetical megastructures, conceived of by famed physicist Freeman Dyson, that encompass stars and capture a large percentage of their solar power output (per Wikipedia).

“One should expect that, within a few thousand years of its entering the stage of industrial development, any intelligent species should be found occupying an artificial biosphere which completely surrounds its parent star,” wrote Dyson in a 1960 paper in which he first explained the concept.

— CNN

Learn more about this study on Dyson spheres: CNN, MSN, Yahoo!, 7 News Miami, ABC 17 News (Missouri), and WLFI (Indiana).