wynalazki: Dyson sphere

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output. The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to imagine how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy requirements once those requirements exceed what can be generated from the home planet's resources alone. Because only a tiny fraction of a star's energy emissions reaches the surface of any orbiting planet, building structures encircling a star would enable a civilization to harvest far more energy. The earliest modern imagining of such a structure was by Olaf Stapledon in his science fiction novel Star Maker (1937). The same concept was later used by phys…

Evidence: 47 • authority: 88

Planet candidates orbiting the Barnard's star seen with ESPRESSO. ESPRESSO is the VLT ultra-stable high-resolution spectrograph, developed by institutions from Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and ESO, located in the combined Coudé Lab of the VLT at ESO, and is able to operate either using one 8.2m-VLT UT or simultaneously with the four VLT UTs. ESPRESSO started routine operations in October 2018 at ESO, and is designed to achieve a radial velocity precision of 10 cm/s, thus opening the possibility to explore new frontiers in science such as the search for rocky planets (Pepe et al. 2021).ESPRESSO has demonstrated unprecedented capabilities, being so far very successful in detectin…

Evidence: 41 • authority: 88

Jupiter-sized planet found orbiting tiny white dwarf star. A huge planet about the size of Jupiter has been spotted orbiting a tiny white dwarf star 80 light-years away.

Evidence: 41 • authority: 72

The Kardashev scale (Russian: шкала Кардашёва, romanized: shkala Kardashova) is a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it is capable of harnessing and using. As both a proposed method of tracking civilizational progress and a way to evaluate potential alien civilizations, it occupies an intersection between futures studies and xenology. The measure was proposed by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in 1964, forming the basis for a series of papers proposing ways to detect super civilizations and direct the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Kardashev's initial model was developed starting from a functional definition o…

Evidence: 35 • authority: 80

Earth-like planet spotted orbiting Sun’s closest star

Evidence: 35 • authority: 80

Star flares when an orbiting planet gets too close

Evidence: — • authority: 72

The fictional universe of the Star Wars franchise primarily takes place in a central galaxy that serves as the principal setting for its films, television, and multimedia installments. Originally established by George Lucas as a "galaxy far, far away", it comprises numerous fictitious planets, moons, star systems, and species. The galaxy is divided into four broad sub-regions: the Core Worlds, Mid Rim, Outer Rim, and Unknown Regions. Notable planets include Coruscant, an ecumenopolis in the Core that functions as a political and cultural center, and Tatooine, a desert planet located in the Outer Rim. The universe initially encompassed a shared collection of works recognized as canon by Luca…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is generally required to be in orbit around a star, stellar remnant, or brown dwarf, and is not one itself. The Solar System has eight planets by the most restrictive definition of the term: the terrestrial planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, and the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a young protostar orbited by a protoplanetary disk. Planets grow in this disk by the gradual accumulation of material driven by gravity, a process called accretion. The word planet comes fro…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

A neutron star is the gravitationally collapsed core of a massive supergiant star. It results from the supernova explosion of a massive star—combined with gravitational collapse—that compresses the core past white dwarf star density to that of atomic nuclei. Surpassed only by black holes, neutron stars are the second-smallest and second-densest known class of stellar objects. Neutron stars have a radius on the order of 10 kilometers (6 miles) and a mass of about 1.4 solar masses (M☉). Stars that collapse into neutron stars typically have an initial total mass between 10 and 25 M☉ or possibly more for those that are especially rich in elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. There are thou…