Extraterrestrial

Are there forms of life that feast on stars ?

By T.K. Randall
January 12, 2015 ·  51 comments

Could an alien race harness the full energy from their sun ? Image Credit: NASA/SDO The idea that there are life forms out there large enough to consume entire stars seems an unlikely one, yet in the hunt to find evidence of life elsewhere in the universe astronomers are keen to exhaust all possibilities and leave no stone unturned.

The concept, which has been put forward by a group of philosophers, astrobiologists and technology experts, is based on the idea that a sufficiently advanced alien race would need to be able to harness tremendous amounts of power.

"Our civilization produces minuscule amounts of energy - a trillion times less than the power produced by the sun," said Avi Loeb, chair of Harvard University's astronomy department.

"You can imagine that some advanced civilization would be able to harness the entire energy of its host star. The question is, how would they do it ?"A 'starivore' therefore is a theoretical organism, as defined by its conversion of matter to energy and expulsion of waste, capable of absorbing and metabolizing the energy from a star.

According to the theory, such life forms may be present in binary star systems where one star can be observed leeching the matter and energy from its neighbor.

"The difficulty with this idea, like any other idea for advanced intelligence, is in finding signals," said Loeb. "If we knew what to look for, we would have found it already."

"Obviously, the confirmation or refutation of this idea is over my head. It needs to be a team effort, composed of high energy astrophysicists and astrobiologists."

Source: Vice.com | Comments (51)

Tags: Starivore, Extraterrestrial, Stars