About 50 years ago, astronomer Nikolai Kardashev created a scale to rank alien civilizations by how much energy they use. A new study in The Astrophysical Journal revisits his ideas, suggesting they may not be the best way to find advanced extraterrestrial life, thedebrief.org reports. Kardashev’s scale has three types of civilizations. Type I uses all the energy on their planet, like solar or wind power across Earth. Type II captures energy from their star, possibly with a Dyson sphere—a giant structure surrounding the star to collect its energy. Type III controls energy from an entire galaxy. However, the study by Brian C. Lacki from the Breakthrough Listen Initiative argues we should focus less on energy use and more on how detectable a civilization’s technology is. Lacki points out that advanced civilizations might not build huge structures like Dyson spheres because they’re hard to maintain. For example, a Dyson sphere could face massive stress from gravity or material wear, making it impractical. Energy consumption estimated in three types of civilizations defined by the Kardashev Scale. Instead, aliens might use “swarms” of smaller objects, like satellites orbiting a star, to collect energy. These swarms are easier to build but risky—if one piece fails, it could crash into others, creating a chain reaction of debris. Lacki calls this a “collisional cascade,” where “the swarm elements are smashed into fragments that are in turn smashed into smaller pieces, and so on, until the entire structure has been reduced to dust.” This is similar to worries about space junk around Earth, known as “Kessler syndrome.” Because of these challenges, Lacki says, “Most megaswarms are thus likely to be short-lived on cosmic timescales without active upkeep.” Advanced civilizations might also prioritize efficient technology that produces less waste, like compact digital systems, making them harder to spot. This means even a Type II civilization might not leave obvious signs we can detect from Earth. The Kardashev Scale is still a popular idea in science fiction, but it may not guide our search for aliens effectively. Lacki suggests we focus on what we can actually observe with today’s telescopes, like unusual light patterns or signals, rather than expecting massive structures. His paper, “Ground to Dust: Collisional Cascades and the Fate of Kardashev II Megaswarms,” shifts the focus to practical ways to find alien life.The post Could Alien Technology Be Invisible to Our Telescopes? first appeared on Anomalien.com.