1080p civilization beyond earth image series#

Wright reports, 'We found about 50 galaxies that have unusually high levels of mid-infrared radiation. He then individually examined and categorized around 100,000 of the most promising galaxy images. Roger Griffith, a postbaccalaureate researcher at Penn State and the lead author of the paper, scoured almost the entire catalog of the WISE satellite's detections - nearly 100 million entries - for objects consistent with galaxies emitting too much mid-infrared radiation.

It was not until space-based telescopes like the WISE satellite that it became possible to make sensitive measurements of this radiation emitted by objects in space. Theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson proposed in the 1960s that advanced alien civilizations beyond Earth could be detected by the telltale evidence of their mid-infrared emissions. 'This same basic physics causes your computer to radiate heat while it is turned on.' 'Whether an advanced spacefaring civilization uses the large amounts of energy from its galaxy's stars to power computers, space flight, communication, or something we can't yet imagine, fundamental thermodynamics tells us that this energy must be radiated away as heat in the mid-infrared wavelengths,' Wright said. Also among the team's discoveries are some mysterious new phenomena in our own Milky Way galaxy.

1080p civilization beyond earth image series#

The research team's first paper about its Glimpsing Heat from Alien Technologies Survey (G-HAT), will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series on April 15, 2015. Wright, an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds at Penn State University, who conceived of and initiated the research. 'The idea behind our research is that, if an entire galaxy had been colonized by an advanced spacefaring civilization, the energy produced by that civilization's technologies would be detectable in mid-infrared wavelengths - exactly the radiation that the WISE satellite was designed to detect for other astronomical purposes,' said Jason T. view moreĪfter searching 100,000 galaxies for signs of highly advanced extraterrestrial life, a team of scientists using observations from NASA's WISE orbiting observatory has found no evidence of advanced civilizations in them. The G-HAT team used images such as these to search 100,000 nearby galaxies for unusually large amounts of this mid-infrared emission that might arise from alien civilizations. The orange color represents emission from the heat of stars forming in the galaxy's spiral arms.

Image: This is a false-color image of the mid-infrared emission from the Great Galaxy in Andromeda, as seen by Nasa's WISE space telescope.