Yeah, I thought of this thread when I read the article. A galaxy-spanning civilization that "uses all of the starlight in a galaxy" is a lot bigger scale than I realized we were talking about. I was thinking of detecting individual planetary heat signatures within our galaxy.noxiousdog wrote:Just sayin'
"Whether an advanced spacefaring civilization uses the large amounts of energy from its galaxy's stars to power computers, space flight, communication, or something we can't yet imagine, fundamental thermodynamics tells us that this energy must be radiated away as heat in the mid-infrared wavelengths," Wright said. "This same basic physics causes your computer to radiate heat while it is turned on."
This survey indicates that there's not a Borg or Dalek civilization out there, as far as we can tell.