Seminar

The WISE and Gaia surveys have been claimed to identify candidates for “Dyson spheres", devices constructed to harvest the energy of their host stars by advanced civilisations. Such an advanced organisation might like to hide from prying eyes, but hiding is not possible because of the effects of gravitational microlensing. This seeming fanciful diversion into science fiction might have real technological consequences for how we can view exoplanets. I will sketch a possible new interferometer needing technologies that might change the way data and information travel around the solar system.