Cool Worlds

Could We Detect the Death Star? (2016x42)

Air date: Dec 09, 2016

To celebrate the release of Star Wars Rogue One this weekend, let's ask the question - could we detect the Death Star with our current telescopes? Remarkably astronomers have been thinking about the detectability of alien megastructures, such as the Death Star, for many years and we can apply some scientific thinking to get to the answer. ::More about this Video:: ► Companion video on Martin Archer's channel, "Is the Death Star a Star?": https://youtu.be/Q4CKSekJzxk ► Kipping & Teachey 2016, "A Cloaking Device for Transiting Planets": https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.08928 ► Cool Worlds video by Alex Teachey about our laser cloaking system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1Pqqf_6J9w ► Most recent results from exomoon hunting, Kipping et al. 2015, "The Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler (HEK): V. A Survey of 41 Planetary Candidates for Exomoons": https://arxiv.org/abs/1503.05555 ► Cool Worlds video update on the search for exomoons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3VQ0PdoR3M ► Freeman Dyson's original paper on Dyson Spheres, "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation": http://science.sciencemag.org/content/131/3414/1667 ► Cool Worlds video explaining "What is an Alien Megastructure?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYHVCW3BkHU ::Playlists For Channel:: Latest Cool Worlds Videos ► http://bit.ly/NewCoolWorlds Cool Worlds Research ► http://bit.ly/CoolWorldsResearch Guest Videos ► http://bit.ly/CoolWorldsGuests Q&A Videos ► http://bit.ly/CoolWorldsQA Science of TV/Film ► http://bit.ly/ScienceMovies ::Follow us:: SUBSCRIBE to the channel http://bit.ly/CoolWorldsSubscribe Cool Worlds Lab http://coolworlds.astro.columbia.edu Twitter https://twitter.com/david_kipping Instagram https://www.instagram.com/cool.worlds THANKS FOR WATCHING!!