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You disassemble a planet for the raw materials. Mercury would do. The real problem is that Dyson spheres are wasteful because stellar fusion is thermodynamical
by _dain_ 2y ago
You disassemble a planet for the raw materials. Mercury would do.
The real problem is that Dyson spheres are wasteful because stellar fusion is thermodynamically inefficient. If you harvest the material of the star and fuse it yourself, you can keep the lights on for trillions of years.
- aurareturn 2y agoThe OP’s second point is that you would change the gravitational balance of the solar system if you disassemble mercury.
- mattsan 2y agoFunny thought - want to solve global warming? Disassemble Mercury! Earth's orbit in theory would space a bit further out
- aurareturn 2y agoEver heard of the 3 body problem? No way we can reliably model that.
- mattsan 2y agoWas a joke :)
- blamestross 2y agoSo that isn't true. The 3 body problem is a problem in theory and extreme situations, not practice. We discovered half the planets by doing the math to predict the orbits based on the known distribution of math in the solar system. General Relativity was initially validated by predicting mercury's orbit accurately.
- yreg 2y ago> known distribution of math in the solar system. And mass as well :)
- vitiral 2y ago3 body problem: orbital decay when there are three orbiting bodies of SIMILAR MASS. Mercury is not similar mass to the sun, so this is not the three body problem
- aurareturn 2y agoGPT4 seems to think it is a 3 body problem. Mercury and Earth are of similar size and exert gravitational effects on each other. Take away mercury and maybe the earth slowly drifts a little. The point is that a very small difference in starting conditions yield wildly different results.
- vitiral 2y agoGPT4 is an idiot. It actually cancels out over the orbit for small objects https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D6GfIDwwxfsM&ved=2ahUKEwjDo6mJ5K2GAxXf6ckDHQKCB2oQwqsBegQIDhAG&usg=AOvVaw26YTxtUcnWhAJcfJXvYuSK https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844...
- prettyStandard 2y agoOkay but if you kept all that mass inside of Earth's orbit then you would not change the center of gravity, and Earth's orbit wouldn't change.
- mattsan 2y agoYou can keep it in the same orbit but spread the mass out along the orbit to the other side and that changes the combined CoG to be closer to Sun's CoG in turn changing Earth's orbit, albeit probably slightly
- elorant 2y agoSure, and what happens next with the trajectories of the remaining planets?
- _dain_ 2y agoThey'd be perturbed a little but it's not like they'd go colliding into anything. It's not a big deal; shell theorem applies.
- mr_mitm 2y agoInteresting thought. I've never heard of this idea. Let's think it through. If I understood correctly, you suggest to turn the heat from fusion into a usable form of energy. On earth we'd do that using steam turbines. Harvesting only the hydrogen from the star to bring it on a planet and fuse it in a reactor seems silly, as the hydrogen is already at sufficient temperature to fuse on its own. So we could send water and steam turbines close to the sun where the turbines charge some sort of battery? Perhaps on some super elliptic orbit, where we switch the full batteries with empty batteries at the apihelion. Or did you have something else in mind?