Interesting poster at the meeting by Richard Carrigan on data mining infrared surveys to constrain, or detect, the presence of Dyson Spheres around nearby stars; or other Kardashev class I++ civilizations.
Short version - he looked through IRAS data.
Nothing jumped out, but the fainter sources are hard to discriminate, and there are anomalous infrared sources...
Long versions, we need to think about this more, and it is worth occasional data mining of mid-infrared sky surveys, which are going to be done anyway for real scientific purposes.
People do this occasionally, because they can and because it is fun.
I remember a paper some years ago on upper limits of KII civilizations in a nearby globular cluster, based on lack of infrared excess.
If you like this sort of thing, for real, it is also worth remembering that all these data are actually public! Anyone can go mine them, with a bit of effort. Spitzer galactic surveys and future Herschel surveys would be a good place to start.
Be a fun amateur effort.
There are two, very confused and lost, bats in the auditorium. Really.
Max Bernstein is talking, it is a good synergy.
The end of session plenary discussion should be good, the bats are swooping the speaker table...
Nope, not they buzzed the door - another reason not to do the "hang out casually in the doorway during session" in order to sneak out of talks, eh?
Ordinary bats or....
Alien Space Bats!
Someone had to say it, given the context of the talk.
Hello Steinn: If it doesn't cost much, let him do it. Maybe he'll find something!
Some blogs on your roll have not updated in a while. Respectfully I suggest A Babe in the Universe as an entertaining addition to "Scientists."
whoever thought the ASBs would show themselves to us. as bats
phew they have a sense of humour
not only do I think Carrigan should have done the Dyson sphere search,
I think others should too
I haven't updated the template and blogroll functions in a while
will do in some quiet moment