What if aliens are cruising through the galaxy—not in spaceships, but in entire star systems? A bold new idea suggests that advanced civilizations could use binary stars as cosmic engines, ejecting matter to create thrust and steer themselves through space. Sounds like sci-fi? It’s actually real science, and philosopher Clement Vidal is at the heart of this groundbreaking theory. Especially in systems with neutron stars, the control and energy potential are out of this world—literally. This video unpacks the mind-blowing mechanics of galactic travel using stars as spaceships. Animation is created by Bright Side. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/
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00:02What if, instead of building spaceships to move across the stars,
00:05a super-advanced civilization decided to turn their entire star system into a spaceship?
00:12That means a whole sun, the planets, all the asteroids, zooming through the galaxy together.
00:18That's what one philosopher, Clement Vidal, suggested in his recent space theory.
00:24There could be countless reasons why these extraterrestrials might decide to explore space.
00:30Maybe the star nearby is about to go supernova,
00:33blowing up and destroying everything nearby, including their home system.
00:38Or maybe they're searching for new resources somewhere in outer space or trying to spread life.
00:44But our galaxy has a minor problem.
00:47It's incredibly huge.
00:48So even if they move with the speed of light,
00:52getting from one star to another would take a gazillion years.
00:56However, if we could just move our entire solar system, that would be convenient.
01:02We wouldn't have to change a thing or look for another star system and planet.
01:07How, though?
01:08Well, they'd use their own star as an engine.
01:12Literally, a stellar engine.
01:14All they'd need to do is push their star, and everything orbiting it, in a specific direction.
01:20You must cause the star to spit out material unevenly, creating a kind of thrust.
01:26It's like our rocket propulsion, but applied to entire stars.
01:31When more material ejects on one side of the star than the other,
01:35it acts like a rocket, slowly nudging the entire system along.
01:39Over time, they could steer it to wherever they want.
01:43Now, this isn't just some goofy idea.
01:46Well, maybe.
01:47But many scientists have proposed different models for how a stellar engine could work,
01:52and how we humans could use it.
01:54The most famous one is called the Shikatov thruster.
01:58Here, the idea is to use a giant reflective mirror to push a star gently in one direction
02:04by reflecting its sunlight.
02:06Other designs propose ejecting mass from the star itself.
02:10Of course, that'd be insanely hard for humans to pull off.
02:14But a super-advanced civilization might just do it.
02:18And it might not be as hard as it sounds.
02:20There are already stars in the galaxy that move at incredible speeds.
02:25They're called hyper-velocity stars.
02:28These stars are so fast, they can escape the galaxy itself.
02:32Their story begins in the heart of the Milky Way.
02:35At the center of our galaxy lies a monster.
02:38A super-massive black hole with gravity so intense, nothing can return from it.
02:44We even took a shot of it a while ago.
02:46Remember this one?
02:47It's called Sagittarius A star.
02:50We start with a pair of binary stars.
02:53They are similar in mass and orbit each other.
02:56Sometimes, they stray too close to a black hole.
03:00When this happens, one star can get captured by the black hole, its fate sealed,
03:04while the other gets the wildest rollercoaster ride of its life.
03:09It's like a crazy slingshot.
03:11It's hurled outward with unimaginable force.
03:14These exiled stars gain incredible speeds, like over a million miles per hour,
03:19and become hyper-velocity stars.
03:22Now, this doesn't happen that often.
03:24Maybe one hyper-velocity star is flung from the galactic center every 100,000 years.
03:30And with over 100 billion stars in our Milky Way, finding them is worse than needles in a haystack.
03:37But even so, we managed to find about 1,000 such exiles in our galaxy.
03:43But anyway, could these super-fast travelers be extraterrestrial starships?
03:48Maybe it's some wild move other civilizations decided to pull off,
03:53getting slingshot by a black hole so they could travel wherever they want at wild speeds.
03:59Now, most hyper-velocity stars studied so far are single stars.
04:04But what about binary systems themselves?
04:07This binary system we mentioned would make this whole process of turning a star into a spaceship much easier.
04:14Another civilization could focus their efforts on one star in the pair.
04:19The interaction between the two stars could be used to fine-tune direction and spin,
04:25like a built-in steering wheel.
04:26It would also help use energy more efficiently.
04:30Let's try implementing this.
04:32Take a neutron star.
04:33This is what's left behind after a huge star reaches its end.
04:37Its tiny, incredibly dense version.
04:40These little neutron stars are often paired with the small and normal ones.
04:45Neutron stars have some insane gravity.
04:48This could help them provide the energy needed to push the whole system.
04:51So, if an extraterrestrial civilization decided to build a machine like this,
04:57they'd probably do that near a binary system like this.
05:01But would our extraterrestrial friends settle for basic binary systems?
05:06Actually, they could go even further, for a wilder, more efficient option.
05:11Black Widow pulsars.
05:13Ooh.
05:14This is the most dramatic type of a binary system.
05:17A neutron star spins with unbelievable speed and doesn't just hang out with its companion star,
05:23but slowly devours it.
05:26These two create such a thrilling gravitational dance, it's both destructive and beautiful.
05:32As the neutron star spins, it just keeps flinging torrents of high-energy particles right into space,
05:39and all of them clash with the fragile remnants of its poor little partner.
05:43Can you imagine that this energy could be harvested?
05:47All these options – hypervelocity stars, binary systems, and spider pulsars – would be great for this stellar engine project.
05:55A civilization that had this type of engine could gradually explore and colonize the galaxy,
06:01all while having its own energy source and planets with them.
06:04But how do we know whether these starships actually exist?
06:10Astronomers look for something called technosignatures.
06:14These are little clues and hints, something that looks unusual for normal celestial bodies.
06:19For example, things like weird motion in binary systems,
06:23or stars that eject material in weird, unnatural ways.
06:28They could all mean that there's some technology being used there.
06:31We haven't any evidence of that so far, but there are candidates.
06:37There are two Black Widow pulsars that look strange.
06:41Clement Vidal, the author of the paper, says that we should look at those systems closely, just in case.
06:48And even if it turns out that this idea is incorrect, we can still use it as an inspiration for ourselves.
06:55If extraterrestrial civilizations won't do this before us, we might just pioneer that technology.
07:03And speaking of technosignatures, besides these starships, NASA is also looking for signs of megastructures in space.
07:11Maybe other civilizations don't treat their stars as some sort of chariot horses,
07:16but simply use them as a giant energy source.
07:19Life needs energy to survive, whether it's microbes, animals, or smart human-like civilizations.
07:26As life evolves, its energy demands skyrocket.
07:30Now, we started with fire, then moved to coal and oil, and now we're exploring solar power.
07:36One day, we might start harvesting the power of our sun directly.
07:40Maybe advanced extraterrestrial creatures are already doing this.
07:44On Earth, a physicist, Freeman Dyson, proposed the idea of a Dyson sphere.
07:51A huge structure around a star that can harvest its energy.
07:56Like one enormous solar panel, but right around the sun.
08:00Sounds crazy to us, but we might find it somewhere out there.
08:04Once again, astronomers are checking technosignatures to spot those.
08:08For example, they've analyzed data from over 5 million stars, trying to find weird signals, flickering, or anything that can't be explained by dust or similar stuff.
08:20If we're talking about a Dyson sphere, then eating a star's energy would make it radiate a lot of infrared heat.
08:27That means we'd notice a telltale glow.
08:30Eventually, they narrowed it down to 368 possible suspects.
08:36They checked those, and only 7 stars remained.
08:39These stars show strange light patterns that we really can't explain yet.
08:44These stars are mostly small, faint red dwarfs.
08:47One of them is especially famous, called Tabby Star.
08:51It blinks and dims in weird random ways, dropping in light by 22% from time to time.
08:58Astronomers aren't sure whether it's some broken moon flying around it, dust, or a Dyson sphere.
09:06In any case, they'll keep looking for these techno-clues.
09:09Let's hope we'll learn the truth someday.
09:11That's it for today.
09:12So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
09:17Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side!
