A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output. The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to imagine how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy requirements once those requirements exceed what can be generated from the home planet’s resources alone. Because only a tiny fraction of a star’s energy emissions reaches the surface of any orbiting planet, building structures encircling a star would enable a civilization to harvest far more energy.
They only work during the day though.
This is what they said about solar panels too, maybe it’ll work out.
I believe they were making a joke because if you wrap this thing around a star there really is no day night cycle because it’s all star. Our day night cycle comes because we are spinning.
we just need a bunch of batteries!
Maybe make it a dyson fan since the sphere would only work during the daytime. In polar areas that means half a year without any energy production!
Whereas there is always solar wind.
wHaT aBoUt wHen iTs NoT WinDy!!??!?!?
If you think it’s cool, you should try the game :)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1366540/Dyson_Sphere_Program/
That’s crazy that they made this hypothesis based on a steam game
I think freeman Dyson beat em to the punch by several decades :)
The game is truly great though.
Some TIL posts really surprise you, it’s crazy to me that you have never heard about this. Not being degrading or anything like that, it’s just surprising.
One of today’s lucky 100000
That’s definitely one of Randall’s more wholesome ones. By the way, this is one of my favourite book quotes on that subject:
The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.
T.H. White, The Once and Future King
Yeah never heard about it, although I never watched Star Trek personally.
But did you know that we can extract Graphene by heating it up super high so that everything else gets destroyed except graphene?
Read the bobiverse and you’ll come across a topopolis. The pictures on wiki suck so here’s one from fiction.
I didn’t know that! You keep sharing the hits! Keep it coming!
Eh, there’s only one in all of Star Trek, and they forgot about it after one episode. Should have a whole series.
There was a star trek novel dealing with it. I read it but don’t remember any details. My favorite along those lines was the ringworld books.
I don’t think it’s surprising at all that you’ve never heard of a Dyson sphere. It’s not a very popular idea even in science fiction.
Is dark matter just Dyson sphered stars?
While the idea is charming, a Dyson sphere itself would still consist of matter and as such it would emit radiation according to its temperature (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_radiation). And since it surrounds a star it is heated from the inside and would definitely emit radiation that can be detected. Dark Matter is missing this radiation part and is only observed by its gravitation.
So the answer is no, unfortunately.
Edit to add disclaimer: this is shitpost level math here guys, I’m just spitballing.
It would definitely emit thermal radiation. if it was 99% efficient and the size of pluto’s orbit, around a star like the sun, and the energy was used to create matter, I think it would radiate the remaining energy as 0.009 W/m2 with a peak emission wavelength of 150micrometers. The James Webb telescope has infrared capabilities that max out at 28.5 micrometers so def not detectable.
But probably a dyson sphere would be smaller than pluto’s orbit, which would greatly increase the apparent power, and shorten the wavelength. idk it’s all imaginary.
I won’t subject you to my hand writing but I did (power of sun × 0.01)/(surface area of sphere with Pluto’s orbital radius) to get radiation intensity (0.009 W/m2). Then rearranged Stefan-Boltzmann law to solve for temperature (19.8K). Then used Wien’s Displacement Law to calculate the peak wavelength (1.5×10-4 m).
Maybe I’ll run the numbers again with a martian orbit radius, and 50% efficiency.
Okay I did the same calculation but with Martian orbit as dyson sphere size, and 50% efficiency I got a wavelength of 3.4um so nicely in the infrared range of JWST.
I think the sphere would need to be like 99.95% efficient to be undetectable by JWST at Martian orbit radius.
My initial reaction: “What? No.”
After thinking a little bit: “hmm I guess you could say that…”
Like I’m sure it’s not but I don’t know if it’s a worse explanation than any of the other ideas being considered. But I don’t know enough to even know how wrong I am.
Start with a dyson ring or swarm
If you want to make one you can.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1366540/Dyson_Sphere_Program/
this looks like it will suck 500 hours out of my life the moment i press play
it’s basically factorio, but it allows 3D belt placement and interplanetary/interstellar transports!
it’s excellent!
factorio latest update added interplanetary stuff! its actually quite cool.
please send help!
oh yeah, i know!
but there’s like 5 planets in factorio…there’s upwards of 16 entire solar systems in DSP ;)
please don’t tempt me
Help me. Factorio has me.
i cant. tell me if you find a way to escape. please.
That’s correct.
I pirated this to check it out and enjoyed it so much that I bought it even though it’s in Early Access and that’s very very rare for me. I still haven’t played it more though as I’m still waiting for it to come out of EA, looking very much forward to play it again.
Same, purchased after pirating. You’ll need cheats to convert your pirated save to legit if you want achievements, however.
I’m the same lol. I bought several books in print after pirating the ebooks.
$20 is the perfect price IMO
edit: pirating this game is kinda funny to me, its a Chinese Dev. team so who knows if there are assets in the game that are not legit. I will probably buy it but I wouldn’t shame anyone who did find another way to get it without purchasing it
It’s a i think 5man dev team and they’ve poured their souls into it, I think they deserve the money
I bought the bundle with Shapez 2
both are really good
Damn that looks cool
Kind of looks like an atom
Be carful with those. You may block the light of constellation aliens use and really piss then off.
excellent stellaris reference! ;)
Eh, they won’t find out until a few centuries later anyway
Well unless they are monitoring or are relatively close. The issue was they got annoyed cause their decedendants won’t see their “holy constellation”. Something like a north star to them I guess. So anyway I started a purification campaign In response.
…no, they won’t know for a few hundred years due to the actual speed of light and vast distances of space.
Unless they have some fancy alien sensor with quantum entangled particles so they get an alert instantly
It’s a Stellaris reference. Once you can build Dyson spheres there’s a chance your (also FTL capable) neighbors complain about you blocking their sacred star.
I usually just give them money and they forgive me.
You’re assuming they are not part of the deep state already!
Just put them in the Synaptic Lathe and forget about them.
Certainly humane than livestock.
“People of Earth, I am Lrrr of the planet Omicron Persei 8.”
I don’t remember the math, but you lose return on investment after a certain percentage of coverage.
Dyson Grids are the future!!! 😜
The other “benefit” to the sphere is blacking out a star. Other life, should it exist, is less likely to find the structure. ITT people destroying my dreams of a big shelly boi
I would think it’d make it more likely that you’re discovered when you turn your star into a black ball with a gigantic IR signature where a star should be. Any civilization with a cursory understanding of gravity and stellar spectra would turn every telescope they have on you.
What does IR red shift into over cosmic distances? But it would be just as, if not less, noticeable as a star suddenly dimming to [100%-optimal capture rate]
Deeper IR, microwave and radio. Within a galaxy, redshift can be ignored. In another galaxy, the issue is moot, you don’t need to worry about them and they don’t need to worry about you.
Our current scopes can pick up brown dwarfs with a surface temperature below freezing. An object the diameter of a planetary orbit, with the gravitational effect of a main sequence star and giving off just black body radiation is gonna stick out like a neon “Interesting stuff here!” sign the moment someone does a long wavelength survey of your general region.
Even if you build a swarm instead of a solid shell, you’re still going to shift the star’s apparent spectrum towards IR, from the swarm radiating waste heat. A star whose mass, diameter and emission spectrum don’t match up with the math is inviting investigation, regardless of how you try to mask what you’ve been doing.
The gravity from the star will also still be there regardless of how much of its EM signature is visible outside of the sphere.
Ouh! Love me some “Dark Forest hypothesis” existential dread 😁
Wouldn’t we cook in the end if you don’t let out residual em?
That’s why you build a ringworld instead.
Or DYson Bubbles, which would also “cover” enough “surface” to be viable without needing god knows how many planets’ worth of material
I like the idea of a dyson swarm
It would probably be configured using YAML and require health checks and quorum monitoring. I’m not sure I would want that job, especially on-call shifts. The consequences of downtime would be on a whole other level.
There is also the Matrioshka brain, a hypothetical supercomputer powered by a Dyson sphere
Ok this one’s new to me!
A pinnacle of science, a wonder of engineering, that we will never get to see in our lifetimes. Instead, we get to see Taiwan get nuked or something, I don’t know. I don’t follow the news much, I only know I’m disappointed.
If we could just speed up cryogenics or hibernation technology…
How about we just speed up ourselves? Build a human sized LHC and leave it running for a few millenia.
Gideon the 9th universe begins
Taiwan is too valuable to nuke. It will be squeezed with a lot of Navy to land attacks, destroying many of the places people live but not the places they work. Then urban warfare will be the rest and it will probably be death of millions.
You need to watch more Star Trek, friend.
Specifically “The Next Generation”, Season 6, Episode 4, " Relics".
Thank me later. 😁
No bloody A B C or D
Classic episode; one of my favorite
With a bottle of green.
Came here to say that if you like this concept, Peter Hamilton has a book series called Commonwealth Saga in the science fiction category that is excellent. Lots of pseudoscience from early 2000s in that series.
Great author!
Okay but where does the invisible hand dryer go?
