An approximation to determine the source of the WOW! Signal
Not the first time I&#x27;ve said this but it&#x27;s highly unlikely that we&#x27;ll detect technological civilizations through radio emissions. We&#x27;ve had this kind of radio emission but it&#x27;s incredibly brief so for Earth, you&#x27;d have to be listening for a few decades over the billions of years Earth has existed. That&#x27;s incredibly unlikely.<p>The far more likely detection method is IR signatures, specifically from Dyson Swarms. A Dyson Swarm is not a rigid sphere (a confusion caused in part by the original name &quot;Dyson Sphere&quot;). It is a collection of orbitals with the intent of making full use of a star&#x27;s energy output. The beauty of this is it&#x27;s all rather low-tech needing little more than solar power, stainless steel level materials science and (this is the big one but is an engineering problem not a science one) getting access to basic raw materials.<p>Just like a cloud looks solid despite being water droplets, a complete Dyson Swarm would be the same. The visible light would be blocked out.<p>But here&#x27;s where the IR part comes in. The only way to dissipate heat in space is to radiate it away. A habitat will have to do this. At any reasonable temperature the signature of that radiated heat is as IR radiation determined by the temperature of the radiating object. That&#x27;s physics.<p>So if you see stars with low visible light output but shines like a beacon in the IR specturm (comparatively) that&#x27;s a good candidate for a Dyson Swarm because stars don&#x27;t otherwise look anything like that. This is what makes any &quot;Hidden Aliens&quot; type scenarios rather implausible. You just can&#x27;t hide these things.<p>Let me add this perspective: on Earth we consume (IIRC) about 10^11 Watts of energy. The Sun&#x27;s energy output is in the order of 10^26 Watts. It is almost unfathomable what you could do with that much power. That&#x27;s using humanity&#x27;s entire energy consumption about every <i>30 nanoseconds</i>.<p>So what&#x27;s more likely: 1. Detecting a few decades of radio emissions or 2. the IR signature of what would likely be millions of years?<p>So I applaud any investigation into the wow! signal just like I do of FRBs. We should understand likely causes but technological life? It almost certainly isn&#x27;t.