Dyson Shells and the Astrobiological Imperative

Finding evidence of large-scale ‘macro-engineering’ projects around other stars may be our best chance of detecting other civilizations. So says Milan Ćirković (Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade) in a paper discussed here yesterday. But what would make us think such structures exist? Recent microlensing projects have found evidence of objects around distant stars — we can detect their lensing effect and separate it from that of the parent star. We naturally assume these are planets, but could they be artificial habitats or other system-wide engineering projects?

Full article here:

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=697