The Starset SocietyBy: Rhodilee Jean Dolor
In 1960, the physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson published “Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infra-Red Radiation.” The paper, which was featured in the journal Science, tackled the concept of what would later become known as the Dyson sphere.
Star Energy for Fueling Advanced Civilizations
Dyson explored the idea of how technologically advanced alien worlds would address their energy requirements when demand increases. He theorized that these civilizations would eventually need to harvest energy from a nearby star.
The idea, which was interestingly inspired by the 1937 science fiction novel Star Maker, involves building a system consisting of a swarm of artificial structures that would orbit the star. The Dyson sphere would collect enormous amounts of energy from the local sun, far more than what the civilization’s planet could produce.
Dyson said that these civilizations would enclose the star to maximize the capture of energy. He theorized that since the system would convert large amounts of starlight into far-infrared radiations, intelligent alien life may be found by looking for large sources of infrared radiation in space.
Freeman Dyson and His ‘Little Joke’
Dyson, who passed away in 2020 at the age of 96, only held a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and did not earn a Ph.D. despite a remarkable teaching career and multidisciplinary accomplishments.
Aside from the Dyson sphere, the professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton is also known for his works in quantum field theory, nuclear physics and engineering. He is behind several other concepts that also bear his name, including a technique in additive number theory known as Dyson’s transform and the hypothetical engineered plant Dyson tree capable of growing on a comet.
In 2003, Dyson told journalist Robert Wright in an interview that his paper on the search for Dyson spheres was “a little joke” but interest in his theory persisted despite this comment.
Black Holes as Powerhouse of Energy
Researchers now consider the idea that instead of tapping the massive power of their native star, alien civilizations could be using Dyson spheres to collect energy from black holes. Black holes are known to gobble up energy, but they can also generate massive amounts of power.
How much power can Dyson spheres generate from black holes? According to astrophysicist Inoue Makoto, from the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, regular black holes can support the so-called type II civilizations that consume power equivalent to that of an entire star system. Supermassive black holes, on the other hand, can power type III civilizations that require power equivalent to that emitted by an entire galaxy.
In 2021, Tiger Yu-Yang Hsiao, from the Institute for Astronomy at the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, and colleagues published a paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS) discussing the possibility of alien civilizations using Dyson sphere to siphon energy from black holes instead of stars.
According to Hsiao and colleagues, their calculations suggest that the accretion disk, surrounding gas and jets of matter and energy of black holes can be viable sources of power. The researchers said that the accretion disk of a stellar black hole of 20 solar masses can produce the same amount of energy that Dyson spheres can draw from around 100,000 stars.
“The largest luminosity can be collected from an accretion disc, reaching enough to maintain a Type II civilization. Moreover, if a Dyson sphere collects not only the electromagnetic radiation but also other types of energy (e.g. kinetic energy) from the jets, the total collected energy would be approximately 5 times larger.” Hsiao and colleagues wrote in their study.
Does Earth have the technology to find alien civilizations that use Dyson sphere to fuel their planet? In their paper, Hsiao and colleagues said that existing telescopes are capable of detecting Dyson sphere emissions from black holes.
“Considering the emission from a Dyson sphere, our results show that the Dyson sphere around a stellar-mass black hole in the Milky Way ( away from us) is detectable in the ultraviolet, optical , near-infrared and mid-infrared wavelengths via the waste heat radiation using current telescopes such as Galaxy Evolution Explorer Ultraviolet Sky Surveys,” they said.
Dyson Minds 2025 Workshop
More recently, a group of interdisciplinary experts met to take a closer look at the idea of extraterrestrial worlds using the Dyson sphere to harvest energy from black holes.
Around 25 attendees gathered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Center for Brains, Minds & Machines on June 3 and 4, 2025 for the Dyson Minds 2025, a workshop led by members of Penn State University, MIT and The Ultraintelligence Foundation.
The participants of the Dyson Minds 2025 workshop include astronomers, astrophysicists, AI experts and engineers from around the world.
“The premise of this workshop was to explore the consequences of the hypothesis that such Dyson minds might be an inevitable consequence of biological life evolving into post-biological life, at least somewhere in the universe,” Olivia Curtis, a postdoctoral fellow at the Penn State
Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center (PSETI), and colleagues wrote in a paper on the workshop published in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in April this year.
“The goal of this workshop was to advance our understanding of the physical, engineering, computational, and behavioral dimensions of Dyson-scale intelligence, with the ultimate objective of setting observational constraints that can inform SETI investigations.”
Search for Intelligent Life
The SETI Institute is spearheading efforts to pick up radio or laser signals that may be transmitted by communicative extraterrestrial beings but evidence of an existing advanced civilization from across the universe remains elusive.
Curtis and colleagues said that a more scientific-based approach to the idea of Dyson spheres may help in humanity’s search for intelligent alien life.
“[B]y treating Dyson Minds as constrained but diverse physical systems, SETI can move beyond speculation toward concrete, testable strategies for identifying signs of extreme intelligence operating around the most powerful energy sources in the present Universe,” they wrote in their paper.
