IR Excess Checker — Partial Dyson Swarm Limits

For a given covering fraction f and waste-heat temperature T, computes the IR excess produced by a partial Dyson swarm and compares it against WISE W3/W4 and SPHEREx survey sensitivity. Returns the f–T region current all-sky surveys exclude — the quantitative falsification backbone for the MTH hypothesis.

MTH Falsification SPHEREx / WISE Technosignature Dyson Swarm

Source Parameters

Covering fraction f 1% (10⁻²)
10⁻⁵10⁻³1
Waste-heat temperature T 300 K
100 K1,500 K3,000 K
Distance 5,430 pc
1 pc1 kpc20 kpc
Host star luminosity L★ 1.0 L☉
0.01 L☉1 L☉100 L☉
Survey depth (5σ point source):
■ SPHEREx 3.5 μm: 40 μJy
■ SPHEREx 4.5 μm: 80 μJy
■ WISE W3 (12 μm): 1 mJy
■ WISE W4 (22 μm): 6 mJy
→ Dyson Swarm → Falsification Hub
Physics & citations

A partial Dyson swarm with covering fraction f intercepts f·L★ of stellar luminosity and re-radiates it as thermal emission at waste-heat temperature T (energy conservation). The spectral flux density at Earth:

F_ν = f · L★ · B_ν(T) / (4 σ T⁴ · d²)

where B_ν(T) is the Planck function, σ is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, and d is the distance. The orbital radius at which the swarm would thermally equilibrate is R = (L★ / 4π σ T⁴)^{1/2} — determined entirely by T and L★, independent of f.

The exclusion curves on the diagram show the minimum covering fraction detectable by each survey at the given distance and stellar luminosity. Above the curve, the excess would have been seen; below, it is currently unconstrained.

Sensitivity values are 5σ point-source depths from published all-sky survey catalogs. Real searches subtract the photospheric model; this tool uses the raw excess as a conservative lower bound on detectability.

⚠ Distance strongly penalizes detectability (f_min ∝ d²). For ωCen at 5.43 kpc, only warm (T = 200–700 K) Dyson swarms with f ≳ 0.1–0.5 are within WISE reach. SPHEREx tightens limits at shorter wavelengths, especially for hotter swarms.
Dyson spheres on the H-R diagram (Suazo et al. 2025) — arXiv:2602.23270
SPHEREx Science Overview (Doré et al. 2025) — arXiv:2511.02985
Project Hephaistos (Suazo et al. 2024), MNRAS 531 — doi:10.1093/mnras/stae1186
Wright et al. 2014 (WISE G-star search) — doi:10.1086/678977
WISE All-Sky Catalog — irsa.ipac.caltech.edu
Wien Peak λ
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Orbital Radius
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Flux @ WISE W3
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Flux @ WISE W4
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Min detect. f
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Covering fraction f vs waste-heat temperature (exclusion diagram)

Excess SED vs detector bands

Detection verdict
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Computing execution hash…