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I mean, we're talking about timescales and construction projects like Dyson spheres. It's entirely feasible that people with such technology could create micros
by naasking 5y ago
I mean, we're talking about timescales and construction projects like Dyson spheres. It's entirely feasible that people with such technology could create microscopic black holes that evaporate quickly for these purposes. Hawking radiation at this scale is substantial.
- ansible 5y agoAh, yes, I do recall reading about that somewhere. That is an interesting prospect, with a very high mass-to-energy efficiency. Of course it requires careful management of inflowing matter. And you can shut if down if needed by stopping the inflow, assuming you have enough stored energy to recreate the micro black hole sometime later.
- naasking 5y agoYou'll probably enjoy this video: https://youtu.be/EzZGPCyrpSU https://youtu.be/EzZGPCyrpSU Good channel too.
- kragen 5y agoA Dyson sphere is technically possible without any new physics with a few decades of work. By contrast, while we have the physics to analyze how black holes much smaller than a proton would behave, we have no plausible way to go about making one.
- naasking 5y ago> A Dyson sphere is technically possible without any new physics with a few decades of work Not a chance. I disagree 100%. The materials science and orbital mechanics for coordination alone are way beyond our capabilities.
- lsparrish 5y agoIt's just a bunch of automated drones flying in formation. Trying to calculate their orbits ahead of time in any kind of detail would be a fool's errand, instead we'd just use solar light pressure to steer them as needed (they would be very thin, there's no point to making them thick). With really thin sails (0.78 g/m^2) they don't even need to orbit, as they can use light pressure to compensate for gravity (what Robert Forward termed a 'statite'). The light they reflect hits other sails on the other side, but this isn't a problem if they are distributed uniformly.
- emteycz 5y agoDyson sphere as conceived by Dyson himself is a swarm of orbiting objects, not a literal sphere around a star (that's Star Trek interpretation). We could start sending out solar panels to orbit the Sun today, and start adding space stations later this/next decade.
- naasking 5y agoIt doesn't count as a Dyson swarm until it captures a large percentage of the sun's output. As I said, that science and the computational power needed to coordinate those kinds of orbital mechanics are beyond us.
- kragen 5y agoYou'll see.
- emteycz 5y agoIt doesn't all have to be at a single distance from the Sun. Some objects can be as far as Earth is and other objects can be at Mars level, at Merkur level or wherever else. There's plenty of space for this to be too hard.
- naasking 5y agoThat doesn't matter if we're talking about scenarios where a significant fraction of the sun's surface area is covered. That requires enough mass for each fragment to make such a loose "shell" that they would influence each other gravitationally and perturb each other's orbits.
- naasking 5y agoNot to mention that that much surface area would catch a lot of solar wind, causing all sorts of rotational moments that will need constant correction. The control theory needed for this sort of thing is complicated and N body problems are undecidable in general.
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