3 ms·

Becoming a Type II civilization on the Kardashev scale might involve construction of a Dyson swarm. This is a thought experiment in which each of the swarm ele

by _rpd 9y ago

Becoming a Type II civilization on the Kardashev scale might involve construction of a Dyson swarm. This is a thought experiment in which each of the swarm elements is Earth sized, presumably providing near-ideal additional habitat for a larger human population.

blackrock 9y ago
Is a complete Dyson sphere even possible? Given the mineral resources available in a solar system. Say you are an advanced alien civilization. And you reach the point where you haven't nuked yourself to death, so now you can expand into space. The first thing you do is to mine all the asteroids, that hadn't coalesced into a planet. So you spend all this energy to capture them, to smelt them, and then you build out your Dyson sphere. You can achieve some coverage of the star, but is it even possible to cover the entire star with solar collecting panels, to capture all the energy output of the star? At best, I think you might be able to get a ring around the star. But even this, is dubious.
- _rpd 9y ago
  You would likely need to obtain the material via ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting and possibly large scale transmutation. Disassembling the gas giants might be enough for some designs. My understanding is that it isn't physically possible to construct rigid spheres or rings in that orbit, so it would be an orbital swarm of some kind, with the elements able to actively correct for the inevitable perturbations.
- animal531 9y ago
  To be fair, where did the 400+ planets come from? One must surely be able to import some material as well. Most of the mass in a generic system should be in the planets, if I remember correctly from an old article here in Sol if we scrapped all the planets we could create a 3m thick Dyson shell. But a ring should be a lot easier to construct.

by _rpd 9y ago

blackrock 9y ago

Is a complete Dyson sphere even possible? Given the mineral resources available in a solar system. Say you are an advanced alien civilization. And you reach the point where you haven't nuked yourself to death, so now you can expand into space. The first thing you do is to mine all the asteroids, that hadn't coalesced into a planet. So you spend all this energy to capture them, to smelt them, and then you build out your Dyson sphere. You can achieve some coverage of the star, but is it even possible to cover the entire star with solar collecting panels, to capture all the energy output of the star? At best, I think you might be able to get a ring around the star. But even this, is dubious.

_rpd 9y ago
You would likely need to obtain the material via ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting and possibly large scale transmutation. Disassembling the gas giants might be enough for some designs. My understanding is that it isn't physically possible to construct rigid spheres or rings in that orbit, so it would be an orbital swarm of some kind, with the elements able to actively correct for the inevitable perturbations.
animal531 9y ago
To be fair, where did the 400+ planets come from? One must surely be able to import some material as well. Most of the mass in a generic system should be in the planets, if I remember correctly from an old article here in Sol if we scrapped all the planets we could create a 3m thick Dyson shell. But a ring should be a lot easier to construct.