This article and the paper it’s about concerns me. It’s already been pointed out in other comments that planetary bodies are inefficient as living surfaces and that they seem to only focus on Dyson spheres as the only megastructure when concepts like Dyson swarms not only exist but are already something we search for when looking for tech signatures. I could dogpile other factors that weren’t mentioned in other comments and their nuances that seem to have not been considered by these academics that include their misconceptions on the development of ideas about megastructure engineering, but I must emphasize the fact that I’m not a graduate-level academic in this field. I’ll grant that this paper will probably get demolished upon peer-review, but how did something this shallow even make it to that level? The paper reads like a collab of high schoolers banging out their section the night before it’s due.

I’ll acknowledge that it’s anecdotal and possibly subject to a few different types of experiential bias, but I’ve seen an increase in shallow bullshit like this getting pushed in upper academia worldwide in a variety of subjects. I’d venture to guess that there are some metastudies on this subject, but it’s concerning that it appears as though the standards for higher level research have been diluted, which has a high possibility of not only shaking the confidence of the general population in those who should be experts in their field, but even casting unfounded doubt on our understanding of the subjects themselves. Not to mention other factors(that would be speculation built upon the admitted speculation preceeding) where there seem to be incentives on just publishing papers for the sake of publishing regardless of the quality, opportunities for bad actors to obfuscate the truth and promote harmful disinformation, and just another mechanism for honest actors and ancient academics to be forced to dig their heels in on established concepts in order to fight all the disinformation, leaving less time to push boundaries of knowledge in good faith.

Look, I’m just some dude on the internet and I acknowledge that some or maybe even all of what I’ve said above could be way off base, but I fear that I’m spot on. And the idea of that just makes me… just so fucking tired.