dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaWISE/CatWISE Constraints on Dysonian Waste-Heat Technosignatures in Nearby Galaxies
| Authors | Bo-Lun Huang, Zhen-Zhao Tao, Tong-Jie Zhang |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | 2601.07297vv1 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.07297 |
| License | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Abstract
We search for galaxy-scale (Dysonian) waste heat in the mid-infrared using WISE. Starting from the 2MASS Redshift Survey (2MRS), we cross-match to CatWISE2020 and AllWISE, apply standard MIR AGN/starburst vetoes (Stern, Assef R90, Jarrett), and treat W1 and W2 as stellar baselines and W3 and W4 as constraining bands. For each galaxy and for blackbody waste heat temperatures T=150-600 K, we convert W3/W4 photometry into conservative 3-sigma per-galaxy upper limits on the bolometric waste heat luminosity using the WISE bandpass (RSR) color correction. The resulting distributions have median caps of ~(5-9) x 10^8 L_sun across T=150-600 K. Aggregated at the population level, the one-sided 95% upper bound on the fraction of nearby galaxies that could host waste heat above a given threshold monotonically decreases with threshold and asymptotes to ~1/6500 at high thresholds (set by the sample size). Sensitivity transitions from W4 at T <= 200K to W3 at T >= 300K. Interpreted with the AGENT formalism, a fiducial Milky Way like stellar luminosity L_=3 x 10^10 L_sun implies typical per galaxy caps of alpha = L_wh/L_ <= 1.7-2.9% over T=150-600 K (e.g., alpha <= 1.8% at T=300 K). At T ~= 300K, no more than f_95 ~= 1.61 x 10^-4 (~= 0.0161%) of nearby galaxies can host KIII-scale systems reprocessing >= 21% of a Milky Way-like stellar luminosity into ~ 300K waste heat.
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"abstract": "We search for galaxy-scale (Dysonian) waste heat in the mid-infrared using WISE. Starting from the 2MASS Redshift Survey (2MRS), we cross-match to CatWISE2020 and AllWISE, apply standard MIR AGN/starburst vetoes (Stern, Assef R90, Jarrett), and treat W1 and W2 as stellar baselines and W3 and W4 as constraining bands. For each galaxy and for blackbody waste heat temperatures T=150-600 K, we convert W3/W4 photometry into conservative 3-sigma per-galaxy upper limits on the bolometric waste heat luminosity using the WISE bandpass (RSR) color correction. The resulting distributions have median caps of ~(5-9) x 10^8 L_sun across T=150-600 K. Aggregated at the population level, the one-sided 95% upper bound on the fraction of nearby galaxies that could host waste heat above a given threshold monotonically decreases with threshold and asymptotes to ~1/6500 at high thresholds (set by the sample size). Sensitivity transitions from W4 at T \u003c= 200K to W3 at T \u003e= 300K. Interpreted with the AGENT formalism, a fiducial Milky Way like stellar luminosity L_=3 x 10^10 L_sun implies typical per galaxy caps of alpha = L_wh/L_ \u003c= 1.7-2.9% over T=150-600 K (e.g., alpha \u003c= 1.8% at T=300 K). At T ~= 300K, no more than f_95 ~= 1.61 x 10^-4 (~= 0.0161%) of nearby galaxies can host KIII-scale systems reprocessing \u003e= 21% of a Milky Way-like stellar luminosity into ~ 300K waste heat.",
"arxiv_id": "2601.07297",
"authors": [
"Bo-Lun Huang",
"Zhen-Zhao Tao",
"Tong-Jie Zhang"
],
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"astro-ph.GA"
],
"license": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"title": "WISE/CatWISE Constraints on Dysonian Waste-Heat Technosignatures in Nearby Galaxies",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.07297",
"version": "v1"
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