A study claims that advanced civilizations could extinguish hundreds of stars in the universe

In our visible world there is Thousands and thousands of stars But unfortunately, we know that in the future All of them will be stopped The time comes due to the exhaustion of internal gas and energy. However, there are also some stars in the galaxy They disappear into the sky without a clear explanationThis is what astrophysicists hold Study carefully For a long time.

One of the most amazing studies that have been recorded in this regard in recent years are those prepared by the scientific project team “Sources of vanishing and appearing in a century of observations.”, Basque In its acronym (“Sources that appear and disappear over a century of observations”), which I tried Catalog of a series of mysteriously disappearing stars To shed Very interesting theories And give them an explanation for this phenomenon.

Vasco, the team that investigates the mysterious disappearances of stars

Beatrice Villarroelthe principal investigator of the VASCO project and an astrophysicist at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics in Sweden, explained some time ago to Space.com website the next: “In the citizen science project, We compare photos from the 1950s With modern images of the sky. The ultimate goal is to identify an object that can be clearly seen in many old photos, but that It is no longer visible currently”.

Thus, Vasco’s study Pictures from over 70 years of timeIn collaboration with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Initiative (SETI), which believes lost stars could serve as a living organism A possible sign of the presence of modern civilizationsthey come to very interesting conclusions in their lives Study published in 2022 For the magazine Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The VASCO study, Villarroel explained, focuses on analyzing the device’s image catalog United States Naval Observatory from Year 1949 Then compare them with Pan-STARRS DR2, Gaia EDR3 and POSS I sky survey files between 2010 and 2014.

What the team found is nothing more and nothing less 298,165 stars Which was visible in the old photos, but not in the new ones. Of course, this This does not mean that all these stars disappeared for strange reasons. Most of them were asteroids, objects that changed in brightness or objects moving at high speed. Ignore this number It drops to 5,399 Stars have doubts about their disappearance.

After studying all these cases manually and Eliminate camera glitches and other errorsthe team eventually reduced the number to 100 stars Which was present in the pictures of the past, but not in the new pictures, and whose disappearance is not known. Then the team took a chance Guess possible causes for this event.

Why do stars disappear?

There are many possible reasons for the disappearance of stars. For example, let’s start from 1949 to now It could have been dark or dim Until it becomes almost imperceptible, which is what happens Natural shape Over time, as happened to the red star Betelgeusefrom the constellation Orin, between the end of 2019 and 2020 (or even as happens to Earth).

via substitutestars can have them too It turned into a supernova. This happens in the last stages of a star’s life, when it is… It explodes and leaves a glow Which can last for several days. Also, although this would be very rare, it is possible that stars could be as well Collapsed due to a black hole Until it disappears. But the study confirms that the probability of this happening is less than one in a billion over the past seventy years.

last More fun theory Refers to the stars missing from the studio It can be gravitational lensesAny distortions of space-time due to the presence of… Extremely large objects. This phenomenon can amplify distant objects, short bursts of light, asteroids, or gamma-ray bursts.

VASCO researchers took advantage of this study to try just that Find technology signs Which indicates the existence of ancient civilizations in the universe: “Technological signals can be defined as characteristics or effects that cannot be attributed to natural phenomena and, therefore, May indicate artificial origin““, explains the team. “For example, artificial communications lasers, Dyson spheres, and massive structures.”. According to scientists, “These last two can Faint or even disappear completely Star”.

So, The idea cannot be ruled out Some of the unexplained missing stars in this study may have been “blown away” or distorted through gravitational lensing by… The direct influence of some advanced and unknown civilizations in the universe. Similar to the Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashevcivilization Type 2 He can harness the total energy of his star Dyson’s theoretical fieldIt is a huge space structure capable of collecting light from its star. Could this be the case…?