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Interstellar Objects From Broken Dyson Spheres

Popular Physics 2023-03-16 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

Without extensive maintenance, Dyson spheres inevitably disintegrate by asteroid impacts over billions of years. The resulting fragments would appear as anomalous interstellar objects, potentially sharing the unusual shape and motion of 1I/Oumuamua or the unusual material strength of the first two interstellar meteors, IM1 and IM2. If the Dyson sphere tiles are light sails, the number of fragments could exceed that of interstellar asteroids because of their reduced escape speed from the star and the increase in stellar luminosity during the red giant phase.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2303.08013,
  title  = {Interstellar Objects From Broken Dyson Spheres},
  author = {Abraham Loeb},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.08013},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in an AAS journal; updated version following editorial review and revisions

R2 v1 2026-06-28T09:16:47.546Z