They discovered that since 1950 more than 800 stars have disappeared from the sky, which could indicate the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations

Published:

May 21, 2021 21:24 GMT

This discovery was made possible through a systematic comparison of contemporary photographic astro maps with those taken in the past seventy years.

Hundreds of stars have vanished from the sky in the past seven decades. Communicate Astronomer Beatrice Villarroil of the Northern Institute for Theoretical Physics will visit SPACE Thursday.

This conclusion was reached thanks to the project Basque (From “ Sources That Vanish and Appear within a Century of Observations ”), made from 2017 and consisting of a systematic comparison of contemporary photographic astronomical maps with those taken in the 1950s by astronomers from the Palomar Observatory, in California (US American).

According to the researcher, the method makes it possible to identify lost stars and distinguish them from those whose brightness fluctuates over time.

“We know there is [estrellas] Variables, But their schedules tend to be a few years at most. We want to find something that goes from a completely stable star to completely disappearing; This has not been documented, and this kind of discovery It could lead to new physicsVillarwell said.

An important stage in processing the big data set is the activity of volunteers. “Our IT team at Uppsala University has developed the Citizen Science website ml-blink.org, Where you can click and merge pictures. The scientist said: “We have computer game developers who sought to make the design more attractive, and we also have artificial intelligence in development,” explaining that in the second stage, the promising images are being reviewed by the team.

This method has already allowed over 800 potentially missing stars to be detected, eight times more than the number Advertise By Villarroel in December 2019. Now scientists are analyzing organisms, trying to classify them according to already known classes, such as red dwarves, supernovae, or variants.

Signs of extraterrestrial life?

“We have a lot of work to do, and I think it’s almost certainly a mixture of things of different kinds,” says Villarroil. At the same time, he suggests that things that do not fit into the Procrustean bed of this or that class may be evidence of extraterrestrial life, for example, to build a Dyson sphere, a hypothetical gigantic structure in the shape of a bubble covering a star. To use all the energy you produce.

“There are many different ways to think about this: Dyson balls and other structures, beacons that are turned on and off, or those that point in our direction for a specific period of time, or maybe there are ways to dispose of civilization stars standing in its way,” Villarwell argued.