The Best Way to Find Aliens: Look for Their Solar Power Plants

In 1960, mathematician and all-around genius Freeman Dyson predicted that every civilization in the Universe eventually runs out of energy on its home planet, provided it survives long enough to do so. Dyson argued that this event constitutes a major hurdle in a civilization's evolution. Those who leap over it do so in the same way: they build a massive collector of starlight, a shell of solar panels. Now, researchers have begun looking for these solar structures beyond earth.