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How can we be sure that something we have classified as a Red Dwarf star isn't a Dyson Sphere? All of the energy of the star has to be vented eventually, so a
by jandrese 5y ago
How can we be sure that something we have classified as a Red Dwarf star isn't a Dyson Sphere? All of the energy of the star has to be vented eventually, so a Dyson Sphere should glow like an end of life star that has expanded to the diameter of the Sphere.
Also, how do you tell the difference between a solar system full of orbitals vs. a young solar system that has not had the orbital lanes cleared by planets?
- cletus 5y agoI don't believe that any Red Dwarf could be mistaken for a full Dyson Swarm. Some people more knowledgeable than me have put a lot of thought into the science of this. You can probably find a more satisfying answer. As for the second part, that's easy. There are two key differences: 1. Young solar systems are around young stars and young stars are... young. We can typically age stars, particularly those close by; and 2. A protoplanetary disk is, well, a disk. A full Dyson Swarm is a sphere. To be clear, it's not a rigid sphere, it's just a collection of orbitals that end up occluding the star they orbit in the same way as small water droplets form a cloud or fog. Alsos I suspect that a protoplanetary disk, even if we're directly on its plane, won't be as dense as a Dyson Swarm.
- PeterisP 5y agoI don't know if we can tell it for any particular star, but we can reason about large numbers of stars. We have a decent model of how stars must age, given their mass and composition; we have a decent model of how that composition must have evolved as the universe ages, so if there were many Dyson spheres around then I think that should be observable as there being "far too much" red dwarfs compared to how many we should observe.