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Why do we think Dyson spheres exist. It's completely conjecture.
by sydthrowaway 5y ago
Why do we think Dyson spheres exist. It's completely conjecture.
- fullstackchris 5y agoExactly my thinking every time I read about them. It's one idea thought up by one scientist. It's so human of us to think some advanced race would build a giant capture device around a star... did anyone stop to ask that if a civilization could do that, they would likely already have technology that could (to our eyes) generate power out of thin air? Nope, caveman brain build big wall around star to get ALL power!
- brnt 5y agoThere are other benefits. The internal surface area of a sphere with radius 1AU has so much area that its unlikely any spacefaring civilization would ever spread to that many planets. It would be enough to have billions of versions of your civilization/species with room to spare, AND have them all be able to communicate without light years of transmission delays, never mind time and cost of travel, and thus drift apart. Then, one has the opportunity to otherwise live in very similar circumstances as the planet one evolved on. Looking at our attraction to nature I would guess any species would think of this as a benefit, and would prefer it over terraforming faraway hostile environments or inhabiting cramped space cabins. So yes, if you have the ability to make a Dyson sphere, I can very well imagine that you would.
- Apocryphon 5y agoWhat if by the time you get to that level of technology, you no longer need that much physical space? I don't even mean in a soft sci-fi "evolutionary progress means becoming energy beings", I mean a hard sci-fi "advanced civilizations just digitize themselves into a virtual reality simulations."
- est31 5y agoYou won't need physical space but you'd still need energy to run that VR simulation.
- brnt 5y agoFor the same reason we eat free range X, hike about in the untouched mountains, like to drive ourselves, despite intravenous food, urban environments and train being readily available. Its not about need, but about want. If you can have anything, my bet is that a Dyson sphere makes more sense than Cyberpunk tech and eating protein goop. Although there is space enough on the sphere for people that prefer it, of course, which there no doubt will be.
- collaborative 5y agoIt's also conjecture that the more advanced a civ is the more energy it needs
- andai 5y agoA counterpoint is Buckminster Fuller's ephemeralization: over time we learn how to do more and more with less and less, until eventually, we can do everything with nothing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeralization https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeralization
- erklik 5y ago> nothing Doesn't that violate cause and effect? i.e. if we can have a "result" without any "effort" then there was no cause for that result i.e. violating cause and effect.
- Apocryphon 5y agoAny sufficiently ultra-advanced technology is indistinguishable from miracles.
- erklik 5y ago> miracles Hmm. Magic and miracles are not the same. One is breaking some of the core laws of physics that hold true regardless of your "capabilities". I also don't really like that justification because it can essentially justify any sort of belief.
- Apocryphon 5y ago"There's no such thing as miracles, or the supernatural, only cutting-edge technology!"
- andai 5y agoI assumed he was observing that as technology improves, human effort asymptotically approaches zero. If it reached zero, I would be worried!
- kumarvvr 5y agoTrue. We are essentially searching for civilizations that have no other forms of energy (from a star) and have to rely on Dyson spheres for their energy. We are excluding all those civilizations that have successfully used a combination of solar, wind, fission & fusion energy to drive their society. I strongly believe that no matter what civilization, no matter how they look, what they consume or what they are made of, the core tenet of "human psychology", or more correctly "conscious being psychology" would evolve in the same way as is for us. If, let us say, we solve our energy issues, and we have built ourselves a world that is sustainable. Would we think about building dyson spheres? No, because there is only so much you can do with energy. You need materials, ores, deposits, etc to actually build something new. I guess the most advanced civilizations would harness the power of the stars, fusion, and build themselves sustainable habitats that can be floated into the eons.
- eulo__ 5y ago> No, because there is only so much you can do with energy. You need materials, ores, deposits, etc to actually build something new. If you had the power of a star you could create all of that from base elements via eatting the star, and you'd barely make a dint in it's mass.
- nine_k 5y agoI'd say that a Dyson sphere is the ultimate form of harvesting solar energy, like, all of it. It should also be considered a successful form of fusion energy capture, using the star as a gravity-contained reactor. A Dyson sphere makes sense when your home planet is not enough by far, and even all the planets in your system are not enough.
- hn_zorba 5y agoI suppose it's a case of looking for lost keys under the lamplight: it might not be there, but at least we'll see it.
- ufhghfggf 5y agoBecause we think intelligent alien life has nothing better to do than destroy the natural beauty of star systems in order to power their crypto-coin mining rigs and video game cards. ;-)
- jancsika 5y agoIntelligent alien fiat systems require roughly similar size dyson spheres. Edit to resolve Poe's law ambiguity: this is a parody. Obviously aliens would have lightning network which would require a smaller overall dyson sphere
- ufhghfggf 5y agoEdited to add a winky face after reading up on Poe's law [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law ].
- quickthrower2 5y agoYou’d need a decentralised money system that can handle eventual consistency. Not because someone is too lazy to use SQL but because of the amount of time it takes to send information around. Maybe the energy itself IS the currency.
- jancsika 5y ago> Maybe the energy itself IS the currency. So you think an alien civilization advanced enough to build a dyson sphere would not know how to leverage it for the fundamental goal of implementing blockchain? I guess it's true what they say: there's a sucker born every minute.
- swman 5y agoI feel like if anything they've figured out a way to capture and use massive amounts of energy in something super small.
- jliptzin 5y agoSuch as the atom?
- dheera 5y agoYes. Also, conservation of energy is completely conjecture. Personally I think it will ultimately prove out to not be true in all cases. I might sound like a heretic for saying this and would be berated in the scientific community for saying that, but in the past most laws that establish constraints eventually prove out to be only true under certain controlled environments.
- nabla9 5y agoYou are late to the game and behind scientific community. Physicists knows the exact reason why energy is conserved and why it might not be conserved. Conserved quantities arise from symmetries in variational systems. Conservation laws are consequence, not unexplained axiomatic law.
- dheera 5y agoNo, they don't "know". Those symmetries are not shown to be universally true, they are just what we have been able to observe, much like Newton's laws are based on observations on the Earth only. Yet Einstein showed that they are only a special case of a much more general universe.
- nabla9 5y agoIt's possible that you didn't read my comment carefully enough. I wrote: "Physicists knows the exact reason why energy is conserved and why it might not be conserved." To parse it: 1. exact reason why energy is conserved 2. why it might not be conserved.
- saagarjha 5y agoYou've literally described…science. The laws we have are things that have held true in the environments we've seen. Good laws tend to apply even to environments that we didn't originally observe them in. So far, conservation of energy has been one of those laws. Even if you turn out to be right people will rightfully look at you as a crank because your position is nothing more than "I think it would be cool if I was right and everyone else was wrong".
- brador 5y agoIt’s just solar panels around a star. Why would it not exist?
- Geee 5y agoIt is the result of darwinism on long time scales. Whatever species utilizes most energy will survive longest.