One group of scientists thinks that we may already have detected technosignatures from a technological civilization's Dyson spheres, but the detection is hidden in our vast troves of astronomical data.

They're publishing their results in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Academy of Sciences. The research is titled "Project Hephaistos – II. Dyson sphere candidates from Gaia DR3, 2MASS, and WISE." The lead author is Matías Suazo, a PhD student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Uppsala University in Sweden.

"In this study, we present a comprehensive search for partial Dyson spheres by analyzing optical and infrared observations from Gaia, 2MASS, and WISE," the authors write.

Combing through all of that data is an arduous task. In this work, the team of researchers developed a special data pipeline to work its way through the combined data of all three surveys.

They point out that they're searching for partially-completed spheres, which would emit excess infrared radiation.