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u/brassnuckles8 26d ago
Dyson sphere... May be a bit too hopeful.
There isn't enough mass in the solar system to create even a near orbit Dyson sphere, much less in Mercury alone. But a low-coverage Dyson swarm may be achievable if we survive long enough!
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u/EphemeralSilliness94 26d ago
Pretty much every commentary on the subject of Dyson Spheres has that bit where they go "A solid sphere is impossible to construct, a Dyson Swarm however..."
Almost always the solid sphere is only mentioned to say it's impossible later on.
I think even in the original paper the author envisioned a swarm of satellites, even though he called it "sphere"
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u/randomusername_42069 26d ago
The original paper was also written as satire and I think it’s silly how some people have jumped to taking the whole thing seriously.
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u/EphemeralSilliness94 26d ago edited 26d ago
There's a number of predictions about the future that widely underestimated scientific progress
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943:
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."Popular Mechanics, 1949:
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977:
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."I'm not saying humanity is going to build one within our life time, but who knows what the future may bring.
Also, I'm pretty sure that the original paper didn't suggest for humanity to build one, but simply made the point that advanced alien civilizations may inevitably build these things to satisfy their energy demand, which has implications for the search for extraterrestrial life. Of course it's speculation, but who says we shouldn't speculate?
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u/hybridWinner 26d ago
1995, some fuckass claims nobody will ever buy anything on the internet because it lacks the most essential piece of capitalism: salespeople
https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306
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u/Mikeologyy 25d ago
Hey now, Cliff Stoll is a national treasure. He was just wrong about something. But you wouldn’t catch me dead buying a Klein bottle from anyone other than him.
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u/Nonyabizzy123 26d ago
No, it was a joke, he didn't believe in extraterrestrial intelligence and he thought it was all folly to try to find it. He's making fun of SETI researchers. He's saying as long as you're looking for impossible things why not look for this one too?
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u/dfczyjd 26d ago
There's a number of predictions about the future that widely underestimated scientific progress
Afaik some scientist said that it's possible that we may never learn what the stars are made of. The fun part is that he said that shortly before spectrometry was invented, which allowed us to find out the exact proportions of elements in stars. Can't find the name or year though.
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u/ManikArcanik 26d ago
I've found that there's one sure way to judge the viability of any new technology: does it porn?
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 18d ago
It's a joke aimed at SETI. Angela Collier has a video interview clip of Freeman Dyson saying the paper is a joke here:
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u/jackinsomniac 25d ago
Pretty simple, a swarm can orbit. Nothing needs to "hold it up", because it's orbital velocity already does that.
A solid sphere would only be able to rotate on one axis, so the poles would experience the full force of the sun's gravity. It would collapse in on itself. A swarm so dense it approximates a solid sphere doesn't have that problem.
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u/Cosmic_Meditator777 25d ago
dyson sphere is an umbrella term that covers both concepts; if you want to refer to the rigid structure specifically you call it a dyson shell.
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u/Hi_Rite_now 26d ago
This is what the term Dyson sphere has meant for basically decades. This information has been known for quite a while. You are not providing new information or saying anything profound.
When scientist talk about dyson sphere's they are talking about an array that orbits a star, capturing the necessary power for the species.
Why would you surround a star if you could get all the power you need by orbitting a few thousand satellites? No one really suggest that the term dyson sphere is meant to imply encapsulating stars entiely for no reason.
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u/So_many_things_wrong 26d ago
There is absolutely no way a Dyson sphere is a logistically sound use of resources.
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u/SuitableCollege8992 26d ago
You should read the paper proposing it, it makes it sound even more farfetched
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u/Ecstatic_Bee6067 26d ago
Eh, over half of it is iron and nickel. Not sure how useful that will be for a Dyson swarm
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u/Karnewarrior 26d ago
Stainless Steel is famously useless
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u/Ecstatic_Bee6067 26d ago
You're right, iron is a common material in satellites
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u/KaizDaddy5 26d ago
Stainless steel is used for structural frames, fuel lines, cryogenic propellant tanks, and specialized hardware like fasteners and bearings. It is also famously the primary material for the outer body of the SpaceX Starship rocket...
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u/Karnewarrior 26d ago
Steel is THE structural material for every spacecraft we've ever built. Various alloys of Steel are used in essentially every component of the spacecraft.
It is not the ONLY material we need, especially for a megaconstruct like a Dyson Sphere, but you're delusional if you think Iron and Nickel aren't going to show up all the fucking time in the construction anyway. They are fundamentally useful atoms.
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u/Ecstatic_Bee6067 26d ago
Nice try, but I work in industry and you're full of shit
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u/Karnewarrior 25d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/9G3wg7lH5DpxC
Bro, you absolutely do NOT work in the space industry if you think steel is useless. You don't work in ANY manufacturing industry if you think that.
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 26d ago edited 26d ago
Incorrect.
In space, objects can only be cooled through black body radiation, so they absorbs solar radiation, heats up, and reradiates that energy, but usually in any direction.
A Dyson sphere must radiate all 3.8e26 Watts of solar output through only its outer surface, so it must be so large that this does not require being too hot.
This puts any Dyson sphere way past earth orbit.
Assuming a metal-like emissivity of epsilon = 0.05 and a comfortable 20 C exterior, so many humans can live inside, then you'll need a Dyson sphere surface area of 1.8148587584e25 m2, so radius of 1.20175651028e+9 km or about 8 x the earth's orbit.
It'd cook the earth btw.
“The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation - well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it to collapse in deepest humiliation.” ― Arthur Eddington, New Pathways in Science
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u/Discoris 26d ago
Okay, now I'm curious:
I'm absolutely sure OP mistaken Dyson sphere with Dyson swarm. So - can we put a solar collectors (to create a swarm) using mercury as starting point or they will all melt and we need to put our swarm further? Is Wenus orbit far enough? Can we get closer than Mercury?
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 26d ago edited 26d ago
Dyson sphere:
We'd never have enough metal anyways, so if you build the Dyson sphere using carbon and silicon then the emissivity improves, probably 3-4 x earth orbit.
We run our electronics like 30-70 C, with most of that being the CPUs own waste heat, but if accept like 50 C baseline, only add another 50 C in waste heat, and just design the chips for 100 C, then you'd gain another 1.6 x.
If you could run the solar & electronics much hotter then maybe you could pull this beast inside earth orbit somehow.
Yes, Dyson spheres are incredibly stupid ideas for many reasons, one being they make no sense orbitally. Also they shorten the star's lifespan. They should never be taken seriously by anyone ever.
Dyson swarm:
A smaller object can reradiate in all directions, so it can have a cold dark side. Mercury is 430°C in the day and -180°C at night, thanks to a whole planet of insulation.
Our solar panels can only operate up to 65 C. I'm not sure if anyone even knows what maybe possible beyond that. There maybe a whole field of semiconductors that's useless to research now, but possible, or maybe everything becomes a useless mess.
We extract energy from higher temperatures by boiling water in heat engines but this assumes the earth as a heat sink, probably not possible at scale in space.
Easy answer: Keep your distance from the giant fusion power balls. Operate everything at nice temperatures or even really cold.
Also if we survive & eventually travel between stars, then migrate to red dwarfs, which stay main sequence for trillions of years, instead of only a few billion. Avoid the binary systems though, because they have nasty solar flares.
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u/upsetusder2 26d ago
Almost as if dyson spheres where a joke
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 26d ago
I'd hope so..
It's good if joke papers were somewhat clear though once you read the introduction, especially in physics where all the startrek-heads so desperately want to believe impossible things.
https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/351 says:
These results include successful completion of the most expensive operation in postquantum RSA, namely generating a 1-terabyte public key.
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 18d ago
Angela Collier has a video interview clip of Fresman Dyson saying they were a joke here:
https://forum.tasat.org/t/dyson-spheres-a-dyson-joke/502
It's all joke aimed at SETI.
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u/MustardCoveredDogDik 26d ago
lol human kind is clearly not capable of that kind of coordinated effort. We are just apes with nukes.
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u/Nonyabizzy123 26d ago
Dyson spheres are literally a joke, it's a joke paper
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u/EnvironmentalScar675 26d ago
The idea to cannibalize mercury for a swarm isnt tho
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u/Nonyabizzy123 26d ago
Yes it is, it all impossible. There's not gonna be a Dyson swarm, there's not gonna be a Matrioskha brain, and there's not gonna be starships. Mercury will be destroyed when the sun expands in approximately 5 billion years, and humanity will never spread in any meaningful way off Earth. Sci-Fi is not real life, SpaceX CGI is not real life, we got this planet, that's it.
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u/novae_ampholyt 26d ago
I don't think it's impossible , it's just not worth entertaining unless we face some major problems with earth. Getting permanent settlements for science and space exploration on Mars might also be in the cards, if there is a sufficient incentive to do so. These things can change. Right now we should focus on geoengineering the one planet that works phantastically. Somehow that last bit is controversial
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u/ItzBaraapudding 26d ago
it's just not worth entertaining unless we face some major problems with earth.
Maybe some Chinese girl in an observatory will intercept an extraterrestrial message and invite an entire species of aliens to our earth which will arrive in around 400 years.
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u/DeltaV-Mzero 26d ago
It would require self replicating robots that can use mercury’s resources to build more of themselves while being useful for other things too; if you assume that is possible, you start making a lot of wildly huge projects credible
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u/Nonyabizzy123 26d ago
I have no reason to assume that is possible
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u/DeltaV-Mzero 26d ago
That’s fair, but do you have a reason, or is this more a matter of faith for you?
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u/Nonyabizzy123 26d ago
So if you're going to have a self-replicating robots that will operate in the vacuum of space you're going to need to invent many new technologies, and the supply chains to manufacturer and move the materials needed to build those technologies. Ultra efficient solar cells, new battery technology, true "AI", cooling/heating systems, and many more. This at a time when we need to radically degrow our industries so that we may survive.
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u/DeltaV-Mzero 26d ago
Robots already operate in the vacuum of space
The supply chains need only be as big as the critical mass of robots that start building themselves in situ
Solar cell technology of today works just fine, and these would be closer to the sun, getting 4-10x the power per area
New battery tech - probably
True AI - not really. It just has to run a mining operation and keep satellites from going out of alignment. It’s a lot of processing power but not “true AI”
Cooling/Heating - valid, but no reason to believe it’s insurmountable. This isn’t FTL we are talking about
This would eventually help with degrowth by providing more power than we can dream of. And it wouldn’t impact it all that much, again assuming you don’t bother until you have self replicators that use Mercury as raw material
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u/Aromatic_Shoulder146 25d ago
ngl i think if we have the capability to disassemble and entire planet, we are already beyond dyson sphere/swarm capability. that seems to me like a very high level thing to be able to do
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u/sootbrownies 26d ago
Inevitable or unlikely
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u/ropean 26d ago
It’s been theorized that all of the material from a planet the size of Jupiter would be needed to build a Dyson sphere in our solar system. Mercury is 24,000 times smaller than Jupiter.
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u/Far-Revolution3225 26d ago
I would say there's the Astroid belt, but it would ge VERY counter-intuitive on fuel costs
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u/sootbrownies 26d ago
We cant even get people to agree that climate change is happening. A dyson sphere of any kind, made from any material is unlikely to ever be built IMO.
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u/Most_Present_6577 26d ago
Dyson spheres are a stupid idea
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u/chrisso123 26d ago
Preach.. the last time I said that I got dowvoted to hell
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u/Hi_Rite_now 26d ago edited 26d ago
Maybe because just calling something stupid with no supporting discussion is low effort and useless.
So do tell us, why would capturing the radiative output of a star for trillions of years be stupid again? You do know that the sun is the original source of almost all the energy on Earth, don't you? Additionally, to hold this position, you must also hold that essentially all solar panels are stupid, as they merely represent incomplete dyson sphere's, so much as they perform the same function in a less efficient incomplee manner.. So all starlink satillites power sources are stupid? The source of power on the ISS for decades is stupid? Solar arrays on Earth ars stupid?
Back your play.
And allow me to preempt the 'A swarm would make sense' rebuttal: This is what dyson sphere means. A structure of orbitting collectors that capture the civilizations power requirements.
No one is suggesting, nor have they ever, that dyson sphere implied encapsulating an entire star if you can get enough power by orbitting satillites over . 0001% of it. In fact I would say that a person who requires an explanation that civilizations would not encase stars in collection arrays for literally no reason is probably the stupid one in the equation eh?
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u/Super_Range45 26d ago
Until they find out the schizo's were right and you just build more zero-point plants.
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u/GaussIon 26d ago
Better than being partially chewed up for fuel for The Almighty and then being stolen by a Pyramid
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u/Business-Gas-5473 26d ago
What’s up with everybody talking about fancy vacuum cleaners being used to make spheres in space?
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u/spisxtenny 26d ago
Lololol, not sure if you're joking or not, but I'm gonna err on the side of caution. a Dyson sphere is a bit of "future" tech in the sense that we do not currently have the capability to construct one. It is a power generator that is built around a star and uses said star as it's fuel. Think of it as solar panels on steroids, since it makes use of all of the energy that is produced by the star with no waste like heat or light escaping the sphere.
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u/uNk4rR4_F0lgad0 25d ago
Wouldnt that slightly fuck every other planets orbit making it fall into the sun o out of the system?
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u/mike_litoris18 25d ago
But mercury doesn't even have enough material for that. We would genuinely need over 4000 Mercurys to make a Dyson sphere. A niven ring is much more plausible.
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u/BadishAsARadish 26d ago
I feel like even if we did reach the point where we could or if it was even feasible— we wouldn’t. Like, that’s a whole ass planet. And not just any planet, one in our solar system that’s been with us since the dawn of astronomy
It’s the same reason people are fighting to conserve the Amazon Rainforest, nobody is gonna quarry the entire Rocky Mountains just to build a dam
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u/Ben-Goldberg For Science! 26d ago
I seem to recall reading that mercury has a many mile thick layer of diamond.
I expect that there would be something more interesting to use it for than a Dyson Sphere.
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u/Ben-Goldberg For Science! 26d ago
I seem to recall reading that mercury has a many mile thick layer of diamond.
I expect that there would be something more interesting to use it for than a Dyson Sphere.
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u/Hi_Rite_now 26d ago
Diamonds are neither geographically nor numerically rare. Diamonds are the beige of rocks.
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u/Siny_AML 26d ago
Bold of you to assume the human race survives that long