While some scientists strive to discover whether alien civilisations might exist somewhere in the depths of space, a team of researchers led by astronomer Tiger Yu-Yang Hsiao from the National Tsing Hua University is looking into a very specific type of potential martian building project.
According to Vice News, Hsiao’s team essentially searches for evidence of hypothetical megastructures known as Dyson spheres.
However, while a usual Dyson sphere is thought to be an artificial structure that encompasses a star and captures a large portion of its power output, the researchers proposed looking for an "inverse Dyson sphere" (IDS) which could siphon power from a black hole in a similar fashion.
"Overall, a black hole can be a promising source and is more efficient than harvesting from a main sequence star," the team postulated.
Arguing that the energy output of a black hole vastly outstrips that of a star, the team claimed that waste heat from an IDS could be "be detected by our current telescopes."
The media outlet also points out that no known metal could withstand the temperatures of a black hole accretion disk or of plasma jets that shoot out into space from them, with the team noting that they "only discuss the civilisations which were born and raised from other stars" in the study.
"We speculate that this kind of civilisation can collect the energy remotely or treat the energy source as a power station rather than living around a black hole with a harsh environment," the team stated. "Therefore, throughout the paper, we do not discuss whether the temperature and the gravity of our configurations are suitable for life."