“Additionally, if aliens can collect all the energy from the jets as well, they will have five times more total energy. “The accretion disc can emit 104-109 times more energy than the Sun,” Hsiao told SYFY WIRE on behalf of his team.

Hsiao and his colleagues, whose study was recently published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, believe there are several energy sources in a black hole that could be the ultimate source of power for intelligent aliens-so long as they don’t get too close. Such a civilization would need an energy source greater than most stars. But would the same thing work if they tried it with a black hole? Astronomer Tiger Yu-Yang Hsiao, of National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, led a team of researchers who investigated whether they could. A (hypothetical) alien civilization advanced enough to harvest energy from the star they orbit may be able to build a structure, or swarm of structures that can harvest its energy.

The spacefaring human civilization in Star Trek: The Next Generation is way ahead of us, but even they had nothing on the immense Dyson sphere the Enterprise encountered.ĭyson spheres are the stuff of sci-fi for now, but maybe not in the future.

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