Technosignatures in the Kepler Field: Slow-Rotator Clues and Stellar-Engineering Concepts

To the point

Scientists are broadening the technosignature search beyond traditional megastructures to ideas like slowing a star’s rotation or harvesting stellar material, but the slow rotators found in Kepler data are probably caused by ordinary factors such as unresolved binaries or low metallicity, and require follow-up to distinguish artificial signals from natural ones.

Are Aliens Harvesting the Spin of Stars?
universetoday.com

Are Aliens Harvesting the Spin of Stars?

One of the challenges of searching for “technosignatures” (i.e. signs that intelligent life somewhere in the universe has created technology) is understanding what to look for. Technology is a very broad area, and different types would show up as different features. One of the most commonly cited is a Dyson sphere, which attempts to encapsulate a star and capture it’s outgoing light to produce energy. But while we’ve looked for the mid-infrared waste heat these structures would produce for decades, we haven’t found a definitive instance of one. According to a new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv by Turkish high school student Sahin Torlakcik, that might be because we are looking for the wrong type of energy all together.