3 ms·

I could imagine humans fighting over the limited energy harvested by Sol’s Dyson sphere in 10million years. It would give any group of human’s controlling it a

by Nbox9 5y ago

I could imagine humans fighting over the limited energy harvested by Sol’s Dyson sphere in 10million years. It would give any group of human’s controlling it a massive advantage, similarly to the advantage having the only A-bomb gave US briefly.

Ekaros 5y ago
On the other end, looking at the population growth projections there might not be too many humans to fight over it in 10 million years. Who am I kidding, they would still fight over it...
rsynnott 5y ago
That's assuming that people have an inexhaustible appetite for energy, geometric population expansion, or both. Those are both actually quite big assumptions and aren't supported by current trends.
SubiculumCode 5y ago
Maybe. Just maybe. We will have artificial fusion energy in 10M years. ;)
- Nbox9 5y ago
  Even if we had fusion most of the mass in the solar system exists in the sun, so that’s where most of the energy is. E=mc^2.
giantrobot 5y ago
There is an absolutely stupid amount of energy given off by the Sun. We're finally waking up to the fact we can capture a portion of the small portion that hits Earth every second to power our civilization. Higher technology levels have only increased the efficiency of our power use and use per capita. I'm not saying we're at the height of technology or development or anything but the idea we'd need a whole star's worth of power output for something I think is ludicrous. If you've got the technology to build a Dyson sphere (or swarm) it's unlikely you'd actually need to. To even get to that point as a tool-using civilization you couldn't have had unchecked geometric growth. Unless you had some Motie-like biological imperative to reproduce uncontrollably your civilization would reach a point long before Dyson sphere level where it worked fine without having to move the mass of several solar systems around a star to capture some high fraction of its power output.

by Nbox9 5y ago

Ekaros 5y ago

On the other end, looking at the population growth projections there might not be too many humans to fight over it in 10 million years. Who am I kidding, they would still fight over it...

rsynnott 5y ago

That's assuming that people have an inexhaustible appetite for energy, geometric population expansion, or both. Those are both actually quite big assumptions and aren't supported by current trends.

SubiculumCode 5y ago

Maybe. Just maybe. We will have artificial fusion energy in 10M years. ;)

Nbox9 5y ago
Even if we had fusion most of the mass in the solar system exists in the sun, so that’s where most of the energy is. E=mc^2.

giantrobot 5y ago

There is an absolutely stupid amount of energy given off by the Sun. We're finally waking up to the fact we can capture a portion of the small portion that hits Earth every second to power our civilization. Higher technology levels have only increased the efficiency of our power use and use per capita. I'm not saying we're at the height of technology or development or anything but the idea we'd need a whole star's worth of power output for something I think is ludicrous. If you've got the technology to build a Dyson sphere (or swarm) it's unlikely you'd actually need to. To even get to that point as a tool-using civilization you couldn't have had unchecked geometric growth. Unless you had some Motie-like biological imperative to reproduce uncontrollably your civilization would reach a point long before Dyson sphere level where it worked fine without having to move the mass of several solar systems around a star to capture some high fraction of its power output.