From Arrival to Signs, flying saucers have been a staple of science fiction blockbusters over the years.
But instead of flying around on UFOs, a new study suggests that advanced civilizations could actually move around the Milky Way by powering stars.
According to Dr. Clement Vidal, a philosopher from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the fastest-moving stars in the Milky Way could be controlled by intelligent aliens.
The enormous distances between the stars make traveling extremely time-consuming and risky.
So instead of leaving the comfort of their home system behind, some spacefaring races may choose to take their solar system with them, according to the experts.
If aliens found a way to force their star to eject material in one direction, they could create a “stellar engine” that could travel thousands of kilometers per second.
While this may sound like a crazy proposal, Dr. Vidal says it could be a reality here in the Milky Way.
It has been shown that stars with the right properties to become stellar engines exist in our Milky Way, he says.
The fastest-moving stars in our galaxy may be controlled by super-advanced alien races capable of turning their sun into a stellar engine (stock image)
Researchers say an alien race could take the entire solar system with them as they traveled through the Milky Way to avoid getting stuck in the vast distances between the stars (stock image)
There are two main reasons why an advanced alien race would need to travel the galaxy.
In his paper, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, Dr. Vidal writes: “Two universal evolutionary motivations will make interstellar travel a necessity for any long-lived civilization: survival and reproduction.”
For example, an alien race may leave its home planet to flee a disaster such as an impending supernova or to gather as many resources as possible.
Whatever the reason, Dr. Vidals explains that all spacefaring aliens will soon have to deal with the “tyranny of the rocket equation.”
This formula for calculating the speed of rockets means that travel through the universe must be either fast and light or slow and heavy.
But since traveling from star to star will likely take generations no matter how fast you go, it makes much more sense that aliens would choose to go slow.
The best way to do that, Dr. Vidal argues, is to build a stellar engine that powers your entire solar system wherever you want it to go.
This would require an alien race to find a way to control which direction the radiation or emissions come from their star.
A new study suggests that aliens can turn a star into an engine by prompting it to emit matter from its outer layers in timed bursts. As this diagram shows, the star system could be steered through space by timing the pulses
This can be done by creating asymmetric magnetic fields or by intensely heating parts of the star.
Scientists have previously looked at whether extremely fast-moving ‘hypervelocity stars’ could be controlled by alien races.
So far, no hypervelocity star has shown unusual movements that could indicate intelligent control.
What Dr.’s proposal What makes Vidal different, however, is that he proposes looking at binary star systems instead of single stars.
In particular, the most plausible candidates would be systems called “spin pulsars,” in which a small star orbits tightly around an incredibly dense neutron star.
Spider pulsars get their name from female black widow spiders that eat their male companions after mating.
In this case, however, the neutron star destroys its companion as intense winds of energetic particles blow away its outer layers.
Redback spin pulsars have a companion between one-tenth and one-half the mass of our Sun, while black widow pulsars have a companion less than five percent the mass of the Sun.
The most likely candidates for a stellar engine are ‘spider pulsars’ (pictured), which consist of a very powerful neutron star orbited by a low-mass companion that is slowly destroyed by the intense radiation
If aliens were to place their machines close to the neutron star, they could theoretically use its intense gravity as an easy source of power.
This allowed them to vaporize the companion star in carefully timed pulses, creating a thrust that would drive the entire binary system through space.
By varying the timing of these pulses, the alien civilization could even direct their system with some degree of control.
For example, if they always activated the pulse at the same time, the system would continue to move in the same direction.
But if they activated the machine a little later, they could change the direction of the heartbeat and change its course.
To move in a direction outside the orbit, the aliens would simply change where their equipment was pointing to change the angle of the pair’s orbit.
Surprisingly, Dr. claims Vidal that there are a number of stars who meet these very specific criteria.
For example, the black widow pulsar PSR J0610-2100 and the redback pulsar PSR J2043+1711 both have the right combination of a dense X-ray neutron star and a tightly orbiting companion.
The researchers say the black widow pulsar PSR J1959+2048 (illustrated) could be a plausible candidate as a stellar engine used by an alien race to capture a nearby star.
Last year, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory spotted another five spin pulsars in the globular star cluster Omega Centauri.
Dr. Vidal claims the theory is plausible enough to warrant further research.
By monitoring potential signatures of advanced civilizations, researchers can refine their search for elusive technosignatures.
Researchers have previously suggested that similar methods could be used to search for stars that show evidence of massive superstructures called Dyson Swarms.
Likewise, fast-moving spin binaries could be good candidates for further study if there is even a remote chance that they could be used as stellar engines.
Dr. Vidal added: ‘I consider the highlighted candidates and predictions of spin stellar engines as promising starting points and clues that require further attention, observation, modeling and follow-up.’