Alien Megastructure Candidates - Not as Crazy as it Sounds!
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- Опубліковано 28 тра 2024
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Dyson Spheres are hypothetical megastructures built by highly advanced civilizations around their stars to harness energy. A group of astrophysicists says they have identified several possible candidates… and I think it's not remotely as crazy as it sounds.
Paper: academic.oup.com/mnras/articl...
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#science #sciencenews #physics #space - Наука та технологія
If we had a Dyson sphere 1 kWh of electricity would cost 0.0001 cent plus 40 cents of taxes in Germany.
Hilarious
Not unreasonable, given that the global warming from a Dyson sphere would be a bit more severe than from fossil fuels.
You forget to account the cost of grabbing 300 planets and than build the Dison, LOLLLLL
The German EVangelists would refuse energy from a Dyson Sphere because a star is full of atom which can't be tolerated. After that they initiate the Kartoffel Purge.😁
Of course, the cost of actually _building_ one would be . . . I'm not sure, but for some reason the word that comes to mind is "humongous."
For a moment I misread the title of this video "Alien Megachurch Candidates"
Please no
Sunday school in space
That’s what the Dyson sphere are for!
@@kevinsayes exactly! That's what I thought at the time.
A truly terrifying thought...😀
I remember in the game "Freelancer" you get to investigate aliens and follow them home. There you discover them having built a Dyson sphere. That gameplay moment alone was worth the price of the game.
A Dyson Sphere is only how WE'd go about it with our current understanding of physics. I think an advanced enough civilization has found an even easier access to near-infinite energy, to where a Dyson Sphere wouldn't even be necessary.
Oh....because if you can dream it you can do it? Yeah.....I"m sure it's gonna be that simple.
I also agree with this. I think an advanced civilization would be able to create far more energy than we do now and more practically. I have a feeling that they'd see a dyson sphere and think it was a huge waste of energy and resources. Why build that when I've mastered physics and can create my own mini sun, (fusion reactor) and zoom around in my spaceship that uses advanced physics to solve the problems of energy efficiency we have today? Zero-point energy, fusion reactors, advancement in the understanding of physics to increase efficiency, and more we can even imagine would antiquate a dyson sphere. We can't even imagine the energy tech a civilization will have a thousand years from now. If anything, I think building a dyson sphere would be a symbol of power, or status and not for its' function. Similar to building large monuments like the great pyramids.
I think you're not giving enough credit to Dyson sphers,it's basically limitless energy,no need to imagine fantasy bs, like zero point energy which has nothing proving it's possible with science, and fusion energy is still pretty far away and might as well be impossible,so give the the Dyson idea some credit@@TheMrbrettster1
@@TheMrbrettster1 A star is a giant fusion reactor, Hello? We'd never be able to build a bigger one!! Dyson Sphere would make fusion rectors obsolete, except for mobile applications.
The only problem with Dyson is they only offer up to 5 year warranty...
And they are very difficult to repair....
This is a joke, I get it. It is not funny
@@Profhoneybare it's HILARIOUS... but wrong... it's a LIMITED warranty... sucking up Space Debris isn't covered... 🤪
And massively overrated! But it is a good point. A functioning Dyson sphere would take millenia to build, but the components would require constant maintenance during the entire construction period. Which would consume an enormous amount of power that you don't have access to because the sphere isn't online yet. By the time the components are ready to be integrated, they would be well past their warranty period and would probably be smashed up irradiated junk.
And they really suck
Dyson developed an idea from Olaf Stapledon's 1937 novel 'Star Maker'. Dyson didn't come up with the idea, just explored it scientifically.
Did he really? Interesting. I've read Star Maker (and Last and First Men) 3 times since 1961, and never knew that :)
Now I have a book to buy - thanks!
Read 'Star Maker' long time ago but I did not make the connection.
@@SMathai ‘Star Maker’ and ‘Last and First Men’ have been published together in a single volume. I also recommend ‘Last Men in London’ and ‘Odd John’ . Enjoy!
:) Well - technically, for all we know the Gilgamesh epos invented the idea of space being more than just something nice to look at, and every scientist since then "just" explored it scientifically. It's a team effort , I guess...
There's a common misunderstanding about Dyson spheres that the video seemed to support.
Dyson spheres can't be rigid structures. Each part of the Dyson sphere must be in an orbital rotation. In a rigid structure, the north and south poles aren't moving, which means there's no centrifugal force to counteract gravity and keep it aloft.
Yes, I'm aware that centrifugal force isn't considered a "real" force but rather the result of inertia. However, the concept still applies-we need a force to balance out gravity.
And while we're on the subject, gravity isn't technically a force either. It's the result of the curvature in the fabric of spacetime. But that's another topic altogether.
To be fair, at least one of the graphics depicted multiple bands rotating, which I suppose is more realistic.
I keep thinking about how much material you need to cover exactly 100% of a sphere? The problem is that some of the rotating bands will overlap.
yep, but the vid shows different models though
No no, what your considerations miss is the point, that the entire sphere (perhaps) would rotate, but more importantly would trap the star in it's center with gigantic magnetic forces ... which itself would eat up almost all the "harvested" energy! - Ooops...
Honestly, Dyson Spheres can make for a thrilling subject in sci-fi essays for 10-year-olds. - Or for runaway "scientists/researcher" feeling the need to produce papers and eager for some attention. The more serious ones would check more plausible or simpel solutions, but by doing so not drag attention. The curse of thorough, solid work ...
@@dirkp.6181 I am not questioning the idea that it would capture the output from the star. I am questioning the idea that it is a rigid sphere. That isn't possible.
Like a massive clutch on a moped
Earth volume gives us roughly a strip 1 km deep and 1000 km wide, at the Earth orbit's distance from the Sun. 1042 km wide to be exact. Coincidence? (both 1000, and 42) Strange, right? (well, I used 6360 as Earth radius, which is what I remembered. Google says 6371 for some reason)
The "if you're against growth you're an enemy of humanity" bit came as a surprise.
Because the growth itself is not a problem, the problem is that our level of technology is unable to sustain that growth without ecological damage. I think.
@@Taronyu_SVK Cancer is growing, too. Until it killed the host. Okay, we won‘t kill earth. Earth will be killing us.
@@Taronyu_SVK humanity is naive in that sense, its not only ecological, but sociological too. Growth is great, but it's also about responsibility on reactions we can or can't control on both ourselves or the ecosystem. More energy does not only come with more technology but also with more responsibility and maturity.
People may ask ''how do we build and use a Dyson sphere?'', but what about ''how would we use it for billions of years''?
Our civilization is like 12 thousands years old and we are at the point where everyday we question if there is a next day while slowly deteriorating the planet.
It's paradoxical that more energy kinda seems to stop growth of life, so i find Sabine's statement a bit blind.
It's at best UA-cam rage bait.
I recommend astrophysicist-turned-UA-camr Dr. Fatima's video "What Astrophysicists Think About Aliens," which argues that a conscious collective choice to turn away from exponentially increasing energy consumption is not just a necessity for the survival of humanity, but of _all_ intelligent species: ua-cam.com/video/_tw0aqmnmaw/v-deo.html
“Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.” - Bill Watterson
True, nothing good would come out of it.
People think that it would be like in the movies.
In reality it's going to be just statistics, part of the people will ignore it, part will go crazy in different directions, part will try to demand something from aliens, part will try to submit themselves to aliens and convince them to take complete control over the earth.
Imagine what must've been the reactions in other worlds, so that aliens are afraid of showing up in ours.
Maybe once showing up they become such an elephant in the room that influences everything even if they don't want to, and soon they get forced into action because political powers trust that aliens will save them.
Or maybe they are afraid of the neighbor effect. Almost all neighboring countries on planet are in one or the other way conflicted, they have some grievances, expectations, or just don't like them.
So the first aliens that will show up may fall victim of some expectations, that they never wanted to fulfill.
Imagine they have technology to cure every disease, but they won't share it.
@@SylwesterKogowski Like in Tera Invicta?
humankind assume they will treat us, like we would treat them
I don't know why, but I can't stop laughing because you ignored the phone when it rang.
it was a wrong number anyway....
@@GrimmJaw496 Prank call - the area code for “Earth” just got added to the galactic directory and there’s always that *one* species that has to try it…
First time here eh?
She might have dodged the test call from an alien overlord who might take a liking to our water-nitrogen planet.
One ring means "we got home ok"
Here is The Dyson Sphere rule: If you can build a Dyson Sphere, YOU DON'T NEED A DYSON SPHERE!
Humm, assuming the Gibbs energy of universe come from entropy and the later came mainly from nuclear fusion in stars, the upper limit of efficiency will be taking the maximum possible benefit allowed by second law of thermodynamics: that’s it, converting all disposable radiating energy on heat and let disperse the heat in form of infrared thermal radiation.
Dyson spheres where conceived under rational assumptions, are not science fiction but a product of a hypothesis
For what reason exactly?
You do realize that building one takes orders of magnitude less energy than you'd get out of it, right?
Completely agree !
If a civilization has such a technology means that they already are able to get their energy from nuclear fusion (and maybe more types of energy that we still ignore), so, in my opinion there's no need to build such a gigantic machine.
We, as humans, are almost arriving to the atomic fusion (almost for a civilization means 200-300 years that are nothing compared to the total time of its presence) so a more advanced technological society won't need all that stuff.
I'm sorry for Dyson but I don't believe in that project. It would be anachronistic
@@TheRiseLP Incorrect. Probably the most overlooked issue is that gravity constantly pulls things into the sun (into your potential dyson sphere), and the sun constantly pushes bursts of energy out which would devastate traditional materials.
The sun eats comets every day. You are not building anything that can;
1. Withstand the heat of the sun enough to shroud it.
2. Withstand being bombarded by comets the same way the sun is.
3. Build anything that uses that much materials.
The surface of the sun is 6 trillion km. A sphere that would cover it, and stay outside of the range of destructive heat, would take many orders of magnitude larger than that. You could strip down every planet, comet, asteroid, meteor, etc in the galaxy and still not have enough material to do that.
It just isn't happening. And it also isn't enough energy to do the deep space things we would want to do either. To bend space for a wormhole you would need tens of thousands of suns to open a hole the size of a needle.
I put Dyson spheres right below being visited by extra terrestrials. For that reason.
The only reason you are traveling million of light years is for resources, and if they did manage to get here, we would be extinct because we use their potential resources up in the worst possible ways.
Much like ants on your picnic table.
But we also don't have enough resources to warrant expending thousands or millions of stars worth of energy to get here.
Fun science. But pseudoscientific at best.
@@borntoosoon7824 Stars are extremely efficient as fusion reactors, if a civilization master controlled fusion first they should use materials to fuse: optimal is hydrogen which is in majority contained in a star.
As far as we know from physics, the main source of energy are stars and the theoretical maximal energy extraction is possible are Dyson Spheres. I don’t know nor care about them but were carefully thought as the extremal profit of thermodynamic laws.
Perhaps dark energy could be an energy source (I think not because is not entropy in space expansion). Apart from that, all the sources we know are derived from stars or need material from stars to fuel (as hydrogen fusion reactors which have never been constructed). So extracting all radiation from a star is a maximally effective machine, somehow a theoretical Carnot machine but at galactic scale
Harvesting energy isn't really a problem; harvesting materials in amounts great enough to cover (at least a portion of) a star is a problem. Any civilization that can go to those lengths would have the technology to leave their stars and find energy elsewhere.
Yeah but you have to bring the energy back somehow. The sun is the closest and biggest source of energy in our solar system. Are there bigger stars out there? Yes, but they are light years away.
but they might not have the bandwidth to leave and find energy elsewhere.
Would they? Interstellar travel if limited by light speed would be temporally impractical. Those that left would spend 100 generations on a ship never to communicate ever again in real time to those left behind which may not be desirable. Building a Dyson sphere may in fact be more practical if light speed is the fastest we can travel or if woem holes or other spacetime warpage does not exist.
@@alangil40 They would indeed. They aren't going to find enough material around their own star, so they would need to have already unlocked FTL travel or wormholes to accomplish it. That having to be the case, there is no reason to drag all that material back to their star to build a Dyson Sphere when they can simply go wherever the energy is easier and more plentiful.
@@DavidGuyton Blackholes for energy are more viable than Dyson spheres and dyson swarms imho, however why do people think we do not have the resources to make a dyson swarm???, Mercury is LITERALLY perfect. Close to the sun (Lots of solar energy) and A shit ton of materials for mirrors. With a dyson swarm we literally could transform our entire star system into a spaceship with a Kaplan thruster
The Earth is that one place the aliens lock the doors on their space ships when they fly by.
Well, they technically never payed taxes. So landing would be costly.
Hahahaha….you win😂
Earth is the Compton of the galaxy.
We steal everything that´s not nailed down
Earth is that rock you haven't turned over, but is crawling with ants, ant eggs, and centipedes. Which you then knee jerk drop, and try not to think about as it lays in your backyard.
Note that the metallicity produced by first and second generation stars was essential for both our complex biology and technology. It's unlikely that complex life and technology evolved around the earlier star generations, which is to say that advanced alien civilizations probably only evolved not until third generation stars like our Sun.
Unless it's possible to have life just made from lighter elements.
I knew that point would be brought up before I could post! 😎👍
@@Knowbody42 Well first gen stars wouldn't likely have planets other than gas giants. Just hydrogen helium and a little lithium back them. Second gen would be pretty resource scarce at best with very few having rocky planets. And with such a scarcity of heavier elements the odds seem mighty thin.
you already said my post but more intelligently
Isn't that still up to 10 billion years?
I'm sure we will eventually chuckle at the idea of a dyson sphere harvesting solar radiation when the aliens show us how to extract limitless energy from the vaccum of 5D space using a handheld device.
I still think that stars within dust clouds are a much more Occam compatible explanation
Occam's razor doesn't dictate you pick the most boring answer. It says you should pick the one with the fewest assumptions. And since you have zero idea how many assumptions it takes to assume an advanced civilization existing in the universe, then how the hell are you applying Occam's razor? And how would you propose the authors are wrong about explicitly excluding dust clouds? Did you even read the paper?
@@flaparoundfpv8632 We know for sure dust clouds exist. Advanced Dyson-sphere building civilisations are only a hypothesis. Do you see now where the razor points?
@@arctic_haze you're inventing dust clouds that fit these data. Your new hypothetical dust clouds need new scientific descriptions and a plausible explanation. We're all looking forward to your publication.
@flaparoundfpv8632 I am inventing nothing. I simply remember a similar claim from 2015 about Tabby's Star (KIC 8462852) which turned out to be a dust cloud.
a truly cosmic capable civilization does not need stars, it would probably keep material from forming stars at all as the star devours its mass far too quickly. if we use even 0.1% of Sun's energy, it means 99.9% is wasted. If we kept Sun from burning on its own, and used it in controlled manner, its mass would last for 1000x more lifetime for the same amount of population as now.
I would think that rather than Dyson Spheres, they would more likely be Dyson Swarms, or perhaps skewed sets of Dyson Rings in the most advanced cases. A solid sphere spinning around a star might be awkward to keep inflated at the rotational poles. Unless, of course, the reason why the builders don't want to contact us is that they know the first thing we'd try to do is pop a sphere to see what happens. Humans are probably popular monsters in Alien versions of the movie "Them!".
Did you perchance mean a Niven Ring? Dyson did spheres and Niven did rings. Neither are self stable and need assistance to avoid crashing into their host star.
Dyson Sphere is the general term for stellar engines, so a Dyson Swarm would arguably also be a Dyson Sphere. The term you're looking for is Dyson Shell, the big solid one.
It's possible the poles could be held up via radiation pressure or solar wind, like a huge balloon.
"Dyson sphere" term encompass swarms and the rest. It's a catch all.
It would always start with a swarm. Real engineers would never start out to build a whole sphere. You go slowly, at least partly because if you harvested ALL the energy of the sun you'd melt the planet.
It does seem unlikely to have seven Dyson-sphere stars so close to our solar system.
Such a pleasure to ear you put things in perspective..tks ! you put a smile on face !
Right ! "Not as Crazy as it Sounds!" it's crazier !
Yup. Absolutely improbable.
More like extreme insanity
Why though?
Sabine & Isaac Arthur crossover incoming
We can hope
@@rogerrinkavage As much as I enjoy most of Sabine's content, I think Isaac would run rings round her, especially on this subject. Judging from this video, she seems to know extremely little about this subject.
My first introduction to Dyson sphere's is from a sci-fi book by Larry Niven, called Ringworld and my favorite The Ringworld Engineers. I recently read The Ringworld Engineers again and was amazed that a sci-fi book written in the 70's still holds up pretty good today. That said, I can't remember the title of it but I read a great scientific and economic overview of why it would unlikely ever be feasible from either a scientific or financial perspective.
I stand corrected.
If we were to do a simple calculation of how much material (pretend iron/steel here) would be needed to create a 1 meter thick, 1000 km wide strip around the Sun, the total volume of material needed for the strip around the sun would be approximately 4,370,006 cubic kilometers (approximately 1.499 billion metric tons of iron).
If we compare that to the available iron in the earth alone (1,150,000,000 metric tons [1.15 billion tons]), we're actually a LOT closer than I imagined.
I now believe enough material _could be_ mined from a local system to create a rudimentary, small structure around a star.
So, approximately
7.874 x 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that's 10 to the 30th)
kilograms of iron would be needed to build a ring 1 meter thick and 1000 meters wide at a distance of 50,000,000 kilometers from the Sun. Any closer would melt the structure.
The entire Earth's mass is 5.972 x 10 to the 24th. 5% of the Earth is iron.
The idea of Dyson spheres annoys me. It's so derivative from our own limited perspective.
We should be looking for giant solar-wind Mills. Or stars with huge kettles on them, boiling water to spin moonsize dynamos that power the solar system.
annoying is a polite word here.
ROFL! Nice.
@@monnoo8221 , yah it is. Dyson spheres are such a stupid idea. Any civilization that generates enough power to do the things needed to build one has no need of the power they would provide.
and the physics of a sphere just don't check out.
@@OgdenM We don't *need* the amount of power we produce now. But we want more. The idea of people not being able to fathom a civilistion wanting more energy than we do annoys me. How short sighted would you have to be to lack the ability to comprehend that advanced civilisations would still have goals they want to reach?
The steam king is omnipresent
What's more practical for generating energy: a huge device that can't be moved, located down in a solar system's shooting gallery area, or a much, much smaller and portable device, like a fusion reactor, that can be operated in much less dangerous places?
You presume that want or need to go anywhere with it.
@@obsidianjane4413 Why not? I would think mobility to be an advantage.
@@Jwinius Something that big is its own destination. Maybe there are ways of moving without moving, portals etc.
@@obsidianjane4413 When you build something that big, you tend to run out of material resources. And everything we know about science says teleportation (tunneling) is not possible beyond the quantum level.
@@Jwinius We probably known very little about what is possible.
Thanks so much for creating and sharing this informative video. Great job. Keep it up
Aliens would certainly use Dyson Spheres for making baked potatoes.
Super Duper Microwave Oven...
Smartass 😂
Niven ring would be easier although 'easier' is relative...
"..because re-naming things is what we call progress on our planet" - Solid Gold right there!
Perhaps aliens are communicating instantly using quantum entanglement. This has the advantage/disadvantage of not only the receiver knowing the question before it’s been sent but the transmitter knowing the receiver’s answer before they sent the question.
I think you are a little quick to dismiss the reality of the amount of materials needed to create a Dyson Sphere. It seems more reasonable that any civilization attempting to create a Dyson Sphere would have to clear out a significant number of nearby systems of material to create a single structure. The star of a system is immense compared to the amount of usable material nearby.
Fanciful human dreaming more like 😂 I think advanced intelligence would have found a far easier way .
0.02% of your local stars mass isn't that much and could (by an advanced enough civilisation) be mined by star lifting and would have the added bonus of extending the life of the star. That's for a complete shell, if we are talking about a Dyson swarm it would need much less, if a species can produce 1 O'Neil cylinder every 10 years after a million years you have a swarm of 100,000 orbiting your star.
Remember, we can see all of these candidates, they are just dimmer, with more infrared, than we expect. I recently saw an interview, on Lex Fridman's channel, or possibly Fraser Cain's, where the expert said: for simplicity I'm just going to use the name Dyson Spheres, to include spheres, swarms, and rings. So probably not actual spheres.
There's no reason the entire star needs to be covered. That's just typical humans thinking there is only one way to do things. So people waste a lot of time calculating how many planets must be consumed to make a sphere then have a hissy fit saying it's impossible. Even scientists do this.
You'd have to completely consume dozens of planets for raw materials... but how do you mine, transport to where, process and smelt that much ore, and make into what materials that can withstand the sun's radiation and also asteroid impacts... and how do you "hang" it in Space?... it would have to constantly rotate around the sun to prevent it from being drawn in by it's gravity or even pushed out by the solar winds...
If we found a planet with microbes on it we would be thoroughly excited and study the hell out of them. I think aliens would want to study us regardless of their development.
No they would not. We are boring to the average alien. They have seen them all. It's our narrow human thinking.
@@prone666 Expanding one's field of knowledge is at the heart of the development of a species. the more advanced a species grows, the greater their ability to obtain new knowledge. We study everything from the smallest particle to the very boundaries of the universe, and everything in between. We discovered CRISPR/CAS-9 by studying bacteria. If we had said, "meh, just another bacterium", we would not have discovered a new tool for gene editing. The idea that an entire planet with a new ecosystem and millions of species of life would be "boring" and beneath study or interest to aliens whose resources would be far less taxed than our own in researching us seems absurd to me. They could potentially learn things from us that we would be inconceivable to us.
I have heard many scientists espouse the view that we would be beneath the interest of a more advanced species. It strikes me as a some sort of misanthropic faux humility.
@@petermarinatos9475 yeah but have you studied each bacteria on the entire planet? No... Just some specific ones from each species. So why do you think that your are a special bacteria of a type that never existent in the universe and should be investigated by some aliens?
@@petermarinatos9475…
Right…
Look at all the various things humans will study… even though they may never have any practical use to us.
We study things because we are curious… which is a precursor of sorts, to becoming more advanced 🤷♂️
I agree it's a lame argument they are not interested in us. Personally I believe there is microbial life in many places in the universe but intelligent life is probably extremely rare. I would not be surprised if we are the only intelligent life in our galaxy. Then it's not surprising to me they have not contacted us yet.
I think people are unnecessarily stuck on the idea that you need to cover the entire star.
Sabine, thanks for covering this stuff. I'm not an expert in this field, and I appreciate different scientists sharing their perspectives openly and freely on this media. Thank Science all around!
Space based solar energy: not practical
Dyson sphere: not as crazy as it sounds
space based solar power only fails when you try to get that energy to earth and compare it economically with building down here.
Different time scales, I suppose. The video concerning space based solar was about us decades in the future, while DS is about project for civilisation at its pinnacle.
😂 I appreciate the irony, even if it's not entirely accurate
"not as crazy as it sounds" is not the same as not crazy
🤦♂
I think it would be more practical for advanced civilization to build a sun in a bottle, then try to bottle a sun.
Quite elegantly put and I very much agree.
@@sam21462 No it is not the case dyson sphere are easy to make when you have automation
No, it wouldn't.
The Sun works because the hydrogen is highly compressed due to the gravity, which is due to its mass. The mass of hydrogen you could put in a bottle wouldn't quite cut it.
Depends how much energy you need. You can't just build something that outputs as much energy as a sun.
Only if the Chinesium panels are more expensive.😁
I don't understand how the Dyson's Sphere doesn't just fall into the star. It's not like it's in orbit, but even if it was rotating then the poles of the sphere are not going to be in orbit, just the equator. It would be like trying to build a bridge over a lake, but none of the bridge is allowed to touch the ground.
It would have to be a swarm on different orbits, like starlink but solar panels, and orbiting the sun. I bet we could fit a 30 meter flexible panel in something the size of an existing starlink sat, and launch 30 of them per launch on a falcon 9, potentially thousands of them in Starship.
That's basically how it starts for us, cheap access to space and we can have all the solar power we want without covering the surface, and probably cheaper than buying land. As our power needs increase we just schedule more launches.
Here's some clarktech idea...
having areas that radiate more heat than others can help create a secondary heat differential to recapture power from, and if you have means to turn heat into matter, then some of that heat will not even radiate out. Even if they do just... Form it into a neutron radiation out...
If the Dyson shell/swarm just radiates mostly Neutrons... Then a bit away, and those neutrons will turn into protons and electrons or (positrons)...
So it will be covered with a layer of Hydrogen. That then can be collected back...
Oh it must be a Dyson sphere.. not dust 😂
That's so interesting, and remember, some day that Dyson sphere might be built around a gigantic diamond that was once our star! Once it turns into a black dwarf. Lol.
black dwarfs are trillions of years into the future...by then life would be dead or would had completely transformed into something we cannot imagine
Sounds very interesting, unless you realize, that even transmitting energy from a solar panels put to space is a very bad idea. So, how's transmitting energy from Dyson sphere will be? I feel like we're gonna receive even less than what we get now and will ruin the whole climate and entire solar system on top of it.
@mayanktripathi8726 Here are the life stages of our star, the Sun, listed with the age of the Sun at each stage:
●Year Zero: The Sun formed in a cosmic nursery known a nebula, which is a huge cloud of gas and dust. Gravity pulled clumps of hydrogen together, and the clumps eventually condensed into a protostar.
●50 Million Years: The protostar was a huge clump of gas and dust that wasn’t quite hot enough to achieve fusion in its core. As gravity pulled it tighter together, it heated up and began to glow.
●4.5 Billion Years: Once the Sun began fusion, it entered the main sequence stage. This stage is characterized by the fusion of hydrogen into helium in the core, which releases energy and keeps the star stable. The Sun has been in this stage for about 4.5 billion years and will continue for another 5 billion years.
●9.5 Billion Years: After the Sun runs out of hydrogen, it will enter the red giant phase. During this stage, the Sun will expand, cool, and change color to become a red giant. This phase is expected to last around 1 billion years.
●10.5 Billion Years: After the red giant phase, the Sun will gradually cool down and stop glowing. It will go through the planetary nebula phase and eventually become a white dwarf, which is a hot, compact star remnant. This phase will last for billions of years.
Billions of Years Later: Finally, the Sun will cool down completely and become a black dwarf, which is a cold, dark, and nearly invisible star remnant. This phase will occur after many billions of years.
Not trillions, only billions, lol
@@mayanktripathi8726 the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics stated that the sun will eventually become a diamond. Astronomer Travis Metcalfe and his team discovered a massive diamond in the constellation Centaurus, which is a crystallized white dwarf. They believe that the sun will follow a similar fate, transforming into a white dwarf in about five billion years and then crystallizing into a diamond about two billion years later.
To build a Dyson sphere, we would need the energy of a Dyson sphere.
You do get that you don't need to build the entire thing at once, right? The more popular method nowadays involves building it as a swarm of power collectors (optionally with habitats attached), which would provide you far more energy, thus massively accelerating the construction speed as you keep working.
Also note a solid Dyson sphere is not feasible with the material available in our solar system, a Dyson swarm could be a viable alternative that aligns with the original concept proposed by Dyson. This may also be the case with other stars systems.
Its statistically more likely that Oprah Winfrey went to the gynocologist, and those are black holes.
most sources say the sphere was never meant to be solid. nor that is is a solar panel. It is actually likely to be a star lifting device.
It seems impossible idea. A ring might work or also might not. Maybe around a very small neutron star or red dwarf...
A sphere would most likely collapse by the gravity.
@@jarikosonen4079 the rings of Saturn do not collapse under gravity.
Here is a voice of reason from S. Goodwin (the Conversation): "A quick calculation reveals that, if we wanted to collect 10% of the sun's energy at the distance the Earth is from the sun, we'd need a surface area equal to 1 billion Earths. And if we had a super-advanced technology that could make the megastructure only 10km thick, that'd mean we'd need about a million Earths worth of material to build them from.
A significant problem is that our solar system only contains about 100 Earths worth of solid material, so our advanced alien civilization would need to dismantle all the planets in 10,000 planetary systems and transport it to the star to build their Dyson sphere. To do it with the material available in a single system, each part of the megastructure could only be one meter thick. This is assuming they use all the elements available in a planetary system. If they needed, say, lots of carbon to make their structures, then we're looking at dismantling millions of planetary systems to get hold of it. Now, I'm not saying a super-advanced alien civilization couldn't do this, but it is one hell of a job.
I'd also strongly suspect that by the time a civilization got to the point of having the ability to build a Dyson sphere, they'd have a better way of getting the power than using a star, if they really needed it"
That’s all fine, but a Dyson ring or swarm is totally doable so the broader point stands, even if a Dyson Sphere in particular isn’t as easy.
The trick, really, is to build the dyson sphere MUCH closer, perhaps inside the boundaries of the solar corona. If a civilization has the incredible technological and material processing capacities to make a dyson sphere possible, they'd almost certainly have technologies that would make things we consider impossible, possible.
what about starlifting? even the small percentage of metals and such in the photosphere would be a HUGE amount of material because the sun is soo massive.
There are also probably some workarounds using giant mirrors made of aluminum foil that are partially supported by radiation pressure. something like a stack of foil rings halfway between an equatorial ring and the star that concentrates light on the equatorial ring
If energy can be converted into matter, would capturing some of a star's light be enough to kickstart the matter creation needed for the rest of the dyson sphere?
10 kilometers thick? That's ridiculously oversized. Do milimeter thick mirrors and you don't even need a small planet's worth of material.
This was the inspiration for Ringworld. A ringworld is a compromise between a Dyson sphere and...well...not having anything.
..it is as crazy as it sounds, there are apparently other ways to extract high energies in a relatively moderate space, we can't even phantom something like this around the Earth let alone the sun...
One of the chief problems with the idea of Dyson spheres is that there's never a clear desciption of what that amount of energy could be practically used for.
Graphics cards.
New ventures into Time travel or performing teleportation, would probably have big energy demands.
Who knows, maybe our future does look like Star Trek. A fleet of Star Faring Ships are going to require a unique fueling station.
Supporting a large enough population?
yeah, only thing would be computing ( computing of what???)... thus it would be a hightly isolationist society
if you get to the tech level that you can actually build a dyson sphere, i would argue you would have no need for it... scattered habitats would make alot more sense
@@luciaceba4640 scattered habitats are a Dyson sphere as long as they utilize a meaningful fraction of the host star.
Maybe we can contact the aliens and ask if it would be ok to run an extension cord
Hypothetically, a Dyson Sphere would either require more technologies further away from the star to emulate the heliosphere that protects that solar system as it moves through the interstellar medium. That, or they would have to leave the Dyson Sphere open on the forward side.
If so, it might be another way to look for them.
You would think that a super advanced civilization that could make a dyson swarm would also have the ability to have a light source on the back of each segment to mimic the stars light. So they are essentially in stealth mode and we wouldn't be able to detect them.
Alien vacuum technology, coming to a Sharper Image near you.
There is not enough matter in our solar system outside the Sun to build even the simplest version of a Dyson anything. Other than that, it's a cool idea.
Tf you mean bro. A DYSON SPHERE is really impossible, however a dyson swarm is doable with the dismantling of Mercury, hell, our solar system is actually perfect for it since Mercury is so close to the sun solar pannels could fuel the factories and mining aparatus and eletromagnetic cannons to deliver the mirrors to sun's orbit and then we refocus it back to Mercury to use it to make the production and mining exponentially faster. After that we can use the mirrors either to power space stations for research, super computers etc, or create anti matter fuel for warpdrives if they require so much energy they need anti, or simply use the mirrors to refocus sunlight to terraform Venus. (Funfact terraforming volcanic hellholes is easier than current Venus)
It's good science fiction
I have several ideas which in my opinion (because I like my ideas) should be considered when seeking for alien communication. Dyson-sphere-like structures could be used to modulate a signal to starlight, effectively using the power output of the star to act as a carrier wave. One should therefore try to seek for signals embedded in the starlight itself. On the other hand, very advanced civilizations could be very well runaway artificial intelligence, which is not constrained by biological processes. As speed of light is very slow, interstellar communication may take a very, very long time. However, artificial life forms could very well slow down their brain activity ie. thinking, which would speed up the passing of time from their perspective (ie. irl time compression). Therefore the signals they might use for interstellar communication could be very slow, single bits taking forever from our point of view. We might miss noticing signals which are sent in totally different time scale.
Sabina, thanks for answering my previous question. In your video post, “Energy from Space is Dead.”, I posted a comment, “OK, then I guess that a Dyson Sphere is out of the question?” This video kind of answers that, in a way.
I love the way you explain, why aliens aren’t interested in us, because life is so common in the universe, they aren’t interested in our existence.
Thank you for another interesting video. Two thoughts here:
1. Aliens are not interested in us, because were boring underdeveloped? I can´t follow here, cause we are really interested in what for instance ants do and how they organize their lifes. What an event, to talk to an ant´s queen!
2. If the Dyson sphere constructors live inside the sphere, wouldn´t they get boiled because it would heat up inside, but on the other hand, if they live on a planet outside the sphere, they would have the same problem with energy transport like we would have with space based solar pannels. Or the planet would cooled down by the shadow of the sphere (like plans suggest to minimize climate change)?
1. I would argue that some of us are interested in what some ants do. Most of us don't care about most ants.
2. Yes, good point! But if you can build a sphere around a star, then building a big chimney to cool a planet should be easy enough. As to the energy transport. It is totally possible to transport huge amounts of energies with EM beams as they suggest for space-based solar power. It's just that our tech isn't ready for that.
@@SabineHossenfelder thanks for your attention☺
The best guess for what you would do with all the energy from a Dyson Sphere is to run simulate virtual environments. So the aliens would actually be living inside computers.
@@SabineHossenfelder 1. Most of us aren't interested about going to space or exploring the universe either and this applies almost all of science. If what % of people are interested is the main parameter on what gets explored and what not, then nearly nothing would've been ever explored.
1a. Please don't answer with what "benefits" those science and other exploration brings. Such "benefits" has never increased the no. of interested people.
2. I don't think the thermodyanmics there exactly works out, without blowing an entire planet and wasting Sun's energy input to the current degree at the same time.
2a. I don't think the person is talking about building chimney to cool planet, rather talking about what havok an enegy beam like this will cause and how that'll destroy the climate.
@@SabineHossenfelder If such civilisations were galaxy-wide then, as Stapledon (who originated the concept decades before Dyson) noted it would be the case that "Not only was every solar system now surrounded by a gauze of light traps, which focused the escaping solar energy for intelligent use, so that the *whole* *galaxy* was dimmed", not only a handful of stars. ; )
Fun video, thanks!
The bit about our Sun being a 3rd generation star. Isn't it possible earlier generations of stars didn't have the correct elements to form life? What I mean by that is that the various elements on the periodic table were formed in stars and then spread via super novas and such. Prior to those super novas there weren't metals and the other elements that are required for our civilization to exist. If I remember correctly the 1st generation of stars didn't produce enough heavy elements, so its possible 3rd generation stars are the beginning of when technological civilizations could exist. P.S. Before anyone comments the planets orbiting a star generally have the same mix of elements as the star itself since they were all formed from the same pool of localized matter.
That argument does not fly anymore with all we know about exoplanets now. Nearly all stars of size comparable to the sun are now confirmed to have planets and a wide variety of those.
@@DominikPlaylists > Nearly all stars of size comparable to the sun are now confirmed to have planets and a wide variety of those.
That's... not entirely accurate. We are unable to observe exoplanets in other galaxies (and not even across the entirety of our own galaxy). We have also never observed any examples of the earliest theorized stars (ie: the ones formed when there was only hydrogen and helium in the universe) so it's hard to argue that we know what kind of planets (if any) would have orbited such stars, but given that there was essentially no metals in the universe anywhere at that time, it's unlikely there would have been any planets capable of supporting life.
By the time the third generation rolled around we know for sure there was enough because we're here to talk about it.
It's the 2nd generation that's most interesting to look at. We know there was _some_ metallicity (from the first generation's novas) but distribution of that metallicity becomes important. Averaging across the entire universe there wouldn't have been high enough levels for sure, but that doesn't exclude the possibility of small regions gaining high enough metallicity to coalesce into a rocky planet.
Also worth keeping in mind that the various generations of stars didn't occur at the same time everywhere. Some places may have sped through first and second generation and arrived at third generation billions of years before our own sun formed.
@@altrag That's a lot of mostly correct stuff but not too relevant. The relevant fact is that we have very good statistics on the number of rocky planets in this galaxy, and we know that number is close to or larger than the number of stars. Our galactic neighborhood is not different than most of the rest of Milky Way, and we do not care much about other galaxies for the purpose of this discussion.
@@DominikPlaylists > and we know that number is close to or larger than the number of stars
Sure, but I'm talking about the distribution. Our own sun has 4 rocky planets. That means there could be 3 other stars with zero rocky planets and we'd have an overall 1:1 ratio.
> and we do not care much about other galaxies for the purpose of this discussion
I don't see any such restriction in any prior part of the discussion. I think most people would generally be pretty interested in discovering life in other galaxies, even if it moves the "probably will never meet" into "almost certainly never meet" territory.
But yes, if you're limiting yourself strictly to our galaxy then you can assume some additional bounds on the search criteria that you wouldn't expect when looking at entirely separate galaxies.
@@altrag oh, I think the estimate is at least 1:1 of Earth size or larger. We do not have enough data right now at all on any Mars/Mercury-like objects. They may be very common or not. And the 1:1 estimate is from 10 years ago, most current estimates revised up substantially. The current planet finding missions mostly cannot even see Earth-size planets at 1AU around the Sun, only slightly bigger ones closer to their star.
the inverse square law pretty much explains why we have not heard from someone. suns transited by planets are an example of the amount of power modulated needed to detect signals from another plantery system.
I've been hearing about Dyson spheres for years. On the one hand, they make sense - to harness all that "wasted" energy that stars are producing. But I have lots of questions about them. In no particular order, here are a few that come to mind: 1. Why would we assume that advanced civilizations would all use this approach? We think we've detected multiple candidates now, but wouldn't Occam's razor seem to apply here - that it's more likely a natural phenomenon that could be created in some consistent way through the laws of physics? 2. We seem to think they're very logically what advanced civilizations would use and how they would be detectable, but how would they work? 3. Would a civilization want to block radiation of energy from other planets in the same solar system?
not an expert but here is my take:
1) well obviously the sun is the first and only place to look if you have ridiculously high energy needs, and simply covering it with a shell seems like the most direct and natural approach. in fact it is so "easy" that it's not hard to imagine our own species doing it one day. yeah those stars they found probably aren't anything special, but the main point is that you can't automatically rule out the idea of dyson spheres in our galaxy.
2) obviously we have no idea how aliens look like or operate, but kardashev's idea was just that increasing energy needs is one constant across all human civilizations. if the aliens are even remotely similar to us, they will also need more and more energy
3) you could design a version that opens up a "window" to let light through onto the planets. that's just a random idea but the point is it doesn't have to interfere with things that much if you design it correctly
Technobros literally want to cover the sun to pump its energy without realizing they're becoming comic book villains
Nah
The factory must grow
But if you have that much power you can orchestrate regions of uncovering/send the appropriate amount of light through
My wife has a Dyson vacuum cleaner. She asked me how it works. Is that the same thing perhaps?
I often wonder if the vortex principle could also be used for "no bag, no filter" indoor air cleaner, useful for people with asthma. Such devices are today requiring expensive filters. My intuition doubts that a vortex can swing out extremely small particles.
@@jean-pierredevent970 I think that it costs too much energy. The smaller the particle the faster the cyclone must be, think about the ultra centrifuge. These cyclone vacuum cleaner do use an additional filter for the findest particles.
@@carlbrenninkmeijer8925 Yes, a pity. I have been thinking about injecting something,tiny droplets or sticky particles which bind to the dust and then the combination can be deposited more easily. Of course this powder or fluid would then cost a ton ;-)
@@jean-pierredevent970 A good idea. For instance, airdryers cool the air, moisture collects on the collector and drips in a tray. Dust will most likely stick to the wet surface and will be removed. But this costs electricity...or try this.Take a large sheep of paper. Hang this vertically down from the ceiling. Take an electric fly tennis racket and connect one elektrode to the paper and the other to the wall. No dust will be attracted by electrostatic forces. there are many ways to charge the sheet of paper. OR use those household sniffers, and attach these to a ceiling ventilation fan
Only issue i would think exists with the idea of Dyson swarms/spheres is the fact that if we look back a couple hundred years, nobody would look for a more advanced society by looking for nuclear plants (or dyson swarms)
So it seems unlikely that there is no other much smarter energy source out there we just dont even know exists yet. (also wouldnt you build up a kugelblitz blackhole at just the right stable size so you can eat up the star/planets/... and turn them to hawking radiation?)
I think dismantling a star makes much more sense. it gives you more material and let's you use the hydrogen more efficiently in smaller reactors. With a Dyson Sphere you would either need to use all the energy at any given moment, store it somehow or waste it.
Why would one build a sphere like this when fusion reactors are smaller and easier to achieve 🤔
Even if you use up all hydrogen on earth the sun will eventually release more energy.
Even if you use up all hydrogen on earth the sun will eventually release more energy.
Even if you can, that star still does emit huge amounts of energy, so you might as well make use of it.
agreed. If you're at the point of destroying and moving entire worlds through space you probably already have a superior energy source.
Guess where the best fusion reactor in the solar system is...
And I always thought, that Dyson Spheres are the dustballs coming out of my vacuum cleaner.
I thought they were built to clean up cosmic dust!!
...I was waiting for this one, or a suitable variation thereof.
I went in assuming Sabine would talk about them or some crazy idea someone had but the fact that's actually real science happening is SO cool.
A mega structure is an endpoint, not the entire project. Civilzations could easily build them up slowly as energy requirements increase. First solar panels in the lagrange points of their planet, then converting an asteroid belt, then there's plenty of energy to start looking at the innermost rocky plants.
Individual intelligence is not the limiting factor of our species, our culture is, problem is the operating system of humanity.
When I look at some individuals, some of whom hold positions of great power, I can't agree with you.
@@MrAstrojensen We have no collective intelligence, power is distributed to who are willing to do anything for it, like psychopaths. Expecting those to work for common good is ridiculous. This is a great dilemma of humanity. We shine the most when authority is weak, common goal is evident. Just like computing power, decentralization is required to maximize human output. Greeks for example were really ahead of their time, I think the most important reason for it is the city states, decentralized governance.
@@utkua That makes two of us... I think I see the problem!!!
We got to the moon *_just to show off_* and assumed showing off would give us power over Russia and the world somehow.
So.. petty, vain, cheapskate, bluffing, powermongers..
To amass so much resources and to construct a dyson sphere is so much I dont think its possible. By the time you finish one section the previous section would already have disintegrated
A civilization should only need to build a few initial self-replicating machines (like von Neumann probes) that can harvest the energy and mass they need to produce a copy of themselves from the star system they've been tasked to "ensphere". Such a probe is the seed of a self-organizing system, which would best be understood as a living organism.
The energy demand to build a dyson sphere would require a dyson sphere. Moving planets worth of material through a system would throw the system out of wack gravitationally. Imagine if we moved Mars past the earth and placed it between Mercury and the sun. We'd all die.
I don't know that it is impossible to build a Dyson Sphere around a star. Our star - maybe. Perhaps we don't have enough material floating around our solar system. But there are going to be star systems out there with more planets, more moons, just more stuff to work with. Perhaps they've even had the opportunity to capture the occasional rogue planet into the bargain. If you have the tech to go to another nearby system that isn't at all habitable, for whatever reasons, and you can 'tow' moons back for dismantling, that's a lot of material.
However, I don't really believe these are Dyson Spheres.
It's going to be dust, isn't it?
It's always dust...
And when you have dust, we're talking a different type of Dyson.
@@AnalyticalReckoner Our solar system is perfect for a Dyson swarm, a Dyson sphere is completely inviable and only for a species that is seriously considering bunkering down in one system and making a matroshyka brain to live in artificial heaven.
More on why our solar system is perfect for a dyson swarm, Mercury. Thats all, its near the sun, it has a lot of material, and has a lot of sun to feed the factories and miners.
@@AnalyticalReckonerthey really wouldn't for a swarm because you can build them piecemeal
I'd assumed we'd done this years ago. Needless to say, the odds that there's ONE species within 100,000 years ahead of us technologically is minute. I would not expect to find one, but hundreds or thousands of spheres. I'm still 100% certain there's no other intelligent life in the galaxy.
Could easily just be that expansion on a scale we expect to be possible just isn't practical for logistical reasons we haven't anticipated
Everyone wants to talk to aliens until the Viltrumites show up.
4:46 OK, we might be microbes for aliens, could be, but I give birds outside my house food, for fun, wouldn't even the aliens like to look at us? Our ice-cream, our beer and our pizza, isn't that worth a trip?
There is probably a sign "don't feed the earthlings".
For much more advanced alien than us, these things probably doesn't matter. Imagine self sustaining life form that doesn't need external nutrition .
I have often made this argument. Once a species conquers science then they would scour the universe for new art and entertainment. Hell, for all we know there may be an entire planet out there that simply loves NFL football and another that has erected statues of Lady Gaga.
@@sam21462 - pretty sure you are right, we love woven baskets made by some tribe, if someone filmed their cat 33 million people have seen it on UA-cam, pretty sure (advanced) aliens are the same, I like seing birds for example, even if I don't look for insects in my lawn
@@yourguard4 - they should enjoy our food, have a beer for example
I literally just learned about an article which proposes degrowth as a solution to Fermi paradox called "Asymptotic burnout and homeostatic awakening: a possible solution to the Fermi paradox?" before watching this video.
In short (at least how I understood it) it's an extrapolation of the city growth to the cosmic scale that argues that any alien civilization who followed the same logic of growth as humanity would probably become extinct so the reason we still didn't meet anyone else is either because 1) they self-destructed or 2) they are "just vibing" because they came to a conclusion that the technological discoveries have finite results and can't save us from the cancer that is ambition to grow forever.
That is my preferred solution as well. All these type 2 civilization ideas are so... of a time. There is no real reason to think energy consumption isn't asymptotic to some value and that furhter enhancements actually lower the energy consumption. It's the same type of thought process that led people to think the world would become endlessly overpopulated until we noticed that over certain level of development the number of children per capita goes down and were able to calculate what the equilibrium population is likely to be.
Whatever that is for energy on the average civilization is probably way less than "crunch up a planet to build solar panels on the sun" numbers. Same with the rest of the fermi paradox conjectures. Nobody jumps into a generation ship without a really good reason, and they'd certainly not do it twice. Advanced civilizations wouldn't build star empires, they would build a backup planet next door, maybe, and that's once the "sun explosion deniers" issue is solved.
Suffers from the objection raised in Hart's original paper on the subject: just because it is possible that one civilisation could take a certain path, one cannot assume that all of them will, if multiple civilisations exist.
>the "sun explosion deniers" issue
Why is people believing different things than you an "issue" that needs solving? That's the same mindset that used to cause religious holy wars.
Here on Earth you don't need the approval of literally everyone to do something so there's no reason to think that it wouldn't be the same for them as well.
@@jacobscrackers98 Hey there! I feel like I missed the first part of your message because I don't understand what you wanted to say.
If it's about my comment about reading an article on degrowth perspective on the topic of Fermi paradox - I wasn't trying to imply Sabine was wrong or anything. I believe that we're all in the domain of speculation anyways, with more or less solid theories, but nothing that pertains to matters of fact or that is worthy of being criticizes as being "wrong".
Besides I'm a macro economist, I know next to nothing about astrophysics, I just found it funny that I read an article about a degrowth theory (which is an economic concept I'm interested in) about Fermi paradox minutes before watching Sabine talk about the aliens and mentioning degrowth in the same video. It's a funny coincidence.
Any "solution" to the Fermi Paradox which requires large numbers of intelligent civilizations to follow some path, or another, is completely missing the point. IT TAKES ONLY ONE! If someone wants to make an argument why we don't see large numbers of intelligent civilizations out there, knock yourself out. But for now, the bigger question is why we don't see ANY intelligent civilizations out there! Any single super-advanced civilization could trivially contact us if they wanted to. And even if they didn't, we might easily detect their existence anyway.
The aliens are gonna be disappointed when they find out your suit was CGI
There are so many phenomena in the universe we have yet to discover, the chances of these data points adding up to advanced alien technology is practically nil. Chances are, what we’re observing are glowing clouds of interstellar gas. Any civilization capable of harnessing that power would be masters of their host galaxy. Their presence would be known decisively, because what would they have to fear from the likes of us?
Dyson came up with the idea in 1960. That explains a lot.
I think it is a silly idea. A civilization that could build such a structure could find lots of other ways to harvest energy. These would probably not require such a building project.
Yep…very important people were also born in ‘60….you know
@@RocRocket-cl3vc Speaking personally, I assume.
@@louisgiokas2206yes…it was a “cryptic” joke so hope you dont mind
Not to speak of the tremendous amount of energy needed to create the sphere before "harvesting" anything! - Why not use the energy required for that for, say, something _useful_ ?!
@@RocRocket-cl3vc No, not at all.
If you are capable of building a Dyson sphere than you don't need a Dyson sphere imho
That makes sense to me.
If you're capable of building a windmill then you don't need a windmill lol
@@hamishfox Look at life: energy is only sometimes a constrain. For example in hot deserts there is lots of energy but little life. What I would say instead is that Dyson spheres are very big so they are one of the few signs of life/intelligence to look for with current technologies.
If you are capable of launching solar powered O'Neill cylinder then you are better of not launching it?
you ramp up energy as you build it
Read an interesting idea from a science fiction writer that materials for Dyson Sphere could be retrieved from the actual star itself and converted to desired materials with the right technology. He claims this would also help prevent star from expanding eventually.
This is the best explanation for the Fermi-paradox I've heard!
"solve a lot of problems very quickly" is one way to spell Armageddon
Alien 1: we've discovered an exoplanet on the outskirts of the galaxy rich in minerals ideal for turning into a dyson sphere.
Alien 2: any intelligent life?
Alien 1: just one.
I'd go for Dyson swarms. Start out small, sparse. Then scale up. Several technologies will need to be mastered. First large scale solar (series of orbiting arrays). Second power beaming (e.g. lasers). Third, replicator technology (ability to take asteroid, planetary material, replicate the array). This would be the basis for an interplanetary, space based power infrastructure. (All of this, is probably Isaac Arthur's territory.)
The main problem with a Dyson sphere is that on the inside surface of it, there is no gravity.
Better to build a ring around a star, spin it, builda a high enough walls around it to keep the atmosphere in.
4:06 The "we're as uninteresting as backyard microbes" argument is weak for trying to explain the Fermi paradox. Even if _you_ aren't personally interested in backyard microbes, there are millions of out of only several billion humans on Earth that are interested (basing that number off of subscriptions to microscopy channels).
If you give the Drake equation an extra factor limiting results to entities with a specific interest in "inconsequential" organisms, conservative inputs still yield a huge number of civilizations that are looking to interact with "backyard microbes" like us.
Yeah the video talks about trillions of individuals across millions of planets and billions of years like they're a single person
You're talking about specialists and hobbyists then. At least the human variants of those often have some kind of codex that they follow when practicing their work or hobby. That could include trying to be a non-disturbing as possible, i.e. not making direct contact.
@@danielh.9010 You're willing to believe that thousands to millions of distinct sapient civilizations, each numbering millions to trillions in population, all independently decided upon a Star Trek prime directive and are 100% compliant with it?
I'm not.
Sabine, it's even crazier than it sounds! There are NO Dyson Spheres and there will never will be one constructed. Any attempt to construct one would be an exercise in futility destined for failure!
Exactly.
No Dyson spheres? None? Zero? Nada? Since you’re so sure, prove it! 🙄
@@peterquinn2997 Have you ever seen an actual to-scale model of the solar system?
Just to reach the "Third Rock from the Sun" you have to go over 90 million miles!
The Voyager spacecraft are the fastest things we have ever made travelling at over 35,00 MPH, and they are, just now, after 50 years, leaving our solar system.
Dyson Spheres will never happen here, nor would anyone ever attempt it elsewhere.
Asking for proof that they don't exist is like asking for the proof that god doesn't exist, even though he doesn't.
You would never be able to protect it from comets and meteors that would cross it's boundary many times more numerous than you could count, and some comets circle the sun at over 1,000,000 MPH!
@@peterquinn2997 How about you prove the opposite.
@@VicMikesvideodiary I’m not the one making absolute and definitive statements so I don’t have to prove anything. But nice try. 🤡
OK, how's this:
Advance civilisations are so incredibly common in the universe that there are billions of Dyson Spheres in every galaxy. In fact about 85% of stars in each galaxy are harnessed in this way, making them invisible to us and explaining dark matter. (Fits the observed weirdness of dark matter too - Stars further from galactic cores are more suitable for Dyson Spheres because of lower risk of gravitational disturbance, very old galaxies lack dark matter because they are pre-spherebuilding civs)
We don't even see the spheres radiating in IR because the energy conversion is just so efficient - the spheres contain the star's energy so efficiently that except for a telltale signal visible only to those who know how to look, they only radiate at microwave wavelengths, blending in perfectly with the interstellar medium and even the CMB for the ones really far out. (Aside from the occasional extremely high energy cosmic ray slipping out, appearing to us to have come from "nowhere in particular but not far away"
Hopefully these civilisations and the broader meta-civilisation don't truly see us as too primitive to be of interest, and it won't be too long before we're deemed admissible. The day we're ready progress past the "demo version" of the universe and suddenly see there are five more stars for every one we see today, will be humanity's true dawn.
putting all the solar panels on one side of the sun, so that the gravity counteracts the light pressure, you can even move the entire planet system .
Here is the big problem with this reasoning in my view. Yes, thermodynamics says that the energy has to come out of the dyson sphere, but they could still actively cool the surface of the whole thing, and concentrate their outgoing waste heat into a beam. This would leave them essentially invisible unless you were in the exact path of their waste beam.
We should search for advanced civilizations with microscope, not telescope. Assuming they are also concerned about survival of their synthetic brains and bodies (if / when they need it). It's much easier to transport and backup across galaxies something as small as quantum foam level rather than awkward biological bodies with huge batteries charged by Dyson sphere for their life support. Besides, it solves the well known "paradox".
A lot of society might find that level of transhumanism disgusting or even worse.
We have right here around 2 billion people who believe the human body to be
sacred and that their physical body will be eternal.
So i don't feel is a good solution to that paradox
This assumes a technology that currently isn't conceivable, so it makes sense to prioritise actually detectable signals that suggest currently plausible technology.
Kinda hard to search for microscopic quantum foam that's lightyears away.
@@hawoaliahmed6996 You're assuming that species evolved much higher than humans still hold onto their biological legacy, including irrational impulses created by biological evolution. I think that's unreasonable, because that legacy is likely to be a burden for further development, including their cultural evolution (i.e. it limits their ability to cooperate on a global scale, because biological evolution doesn't optimize for that, and rather optimizes against that).
@@danielh.9010
You are assuming change means good (evolution is simply a kind of change), we are not more evolved than snail That is a misconception about evolution.
Change is good only if what you are moving toward is what you consider good, Unless you are changing toward what you consider good you are either being neutral or changing toward the evil.
For me, fundamentally changing humanity in such a way isn't a good;
To me, it sounds like substituting humanity with another thing, for you, it might be neutral or even good, But for a ton of people it might sound exactly like an extinction;
And there is nothing irrational in the biological impulses of self-preservation (I would even argue further that there are no irrational biological impulses (maybe deleterious, ineffective or misaligned impulses but never irrational))
P.S.
>global scale cooperation
"Global scale cooperation" is instrumental goal optimizing that is very debatably good and other goal like resilience, freedom of association or to pursue your happiness, will strongly go against that.
To clarify, my only assumption is this: Any existing civilization, far more advanced than ours (e.g. by a billion years) must have far more advanced technology than ours, thanks to which it exists so far.
This doesn't contradict the evolution theory and doesn't require free will.
And in any way I didn't call for any action, especially not for globalism )
Where would all the materials come from to build a dyson sphere. Surely a structure that huge would need more mass than is available in any solar system??
Besides the colossal amount of material that would be required to build one, I imagine solar storms would also be a substantial hurdle to overcome in building a Dyson sphere.
There's not enough matter in a star system to build a Dyson sphere. It's a ridiculous concept.
But more than enough to build a Dyson swarm
the sun has a lot of metals in it you could just mind the sun for materials. even though 0.1% of the sun's mass is metals that's a pretty large amount.
@@UrbanistBlooms Nope.
@@garymathis1042yes there is lol. And most of the blanketing material can be thin reflective sheets directing light to central collectors
@@danielhicks1824 LOL. What is the surface area of every body in the solar system compared to the surface area of Dyson Sphere 100+ million miles from the Sun (or star). This is laughable.
Hey Sabine, aren't you ignoring a few things here? 🤔😅
(1) could live evolve around population III stars (the earliest generation, our sun in population I)? Wouldn't those systems lack enough "metals" to build planets in the first place?
(2) Any significant Dyson sphere would devour so much energy and at least hundreds of planets of materials. Where and to get that from without having a working Dyson sphere to start with?
(3) so I don't believe, intelligent aliens would strive for such a project. If they got powerful enough to build one they might not need it anymore
Heavier elements appeared quite quickly after the very first massive stars formed (giants that had a very short life). So some stars forming a few million years after the first star generation could have had sufficient heavier elements to form rocky planets.
@@vast634 but this would then be population II stars anyways. But yeah, some many might have formed early, along with population III stars
Maybe they make a fusion reaction in space, kind of a miniature star, and put a Dyson sphere around that. Seems a lot more achievable than building one around a regular star.
Something I never see talked about regarding a Dyson sphere;
If a star is completely covered in 'X' material, therefore, blocking the solar wind. What happens to the stars' heliosphere.? How would said civilisation deal with the insanely, massive amount of Galactic radiation, that would bathe the home planet.?
Just a thought to ponder over.
Maybe use some other star as your powerplant. Don't know how to transfer the energy through.
Or maybe the sphere includes the orbiting planet...if you're gonna go big, go big
If the structure is strong enough to withstand the solar wind that close I don't think the galactic radiation would be an issue.
Well the solar wind is roughly symmetrical so the pressure outward on one side of the sphere would be balanced out on the other side. Why would the homeworld be bathed in galactic radiation? The sphere would reduce the number of cosmic Ray's impacting the planet...
These spheres would have to dissipate a huge fraction of the incoming energy into outer space or it becomes rather toasty Inside the sphere really quickly.
Note that one cunning strategy for a dyson sphere is a dyson swarm. Rather than a "solid shell" or connected gantry around a star, arrange a swarm of overlapping satellites. This has a lot of advantages. It would use far less material. You can build it up slowly, a few satellites at a time, and it "pays for itself" immediately - each satellite added to the array captures more free energy. That energy could then be used to build more satellites - and faster. As the swarm grows, the energy surplus runs away at a exponential rate!
Yes! Such a cool topic and I've always wondered what they could be and why we haven't found any candidates. You're awesome Sabine!
We can't even love the so-called alien on our borders.
"Prayers they hide the saddest view
(Believing the strangest things, loving the alien)
And your prayers they break the sky in two
(Believing the strangest things, loving the alien)"
And what would be the consequences of bringing home all that "useful" correlated energy, doing work with it, and thermalizing it into random noise and heat? I'm sure all that noise, heat, and entropy is perfectly harmless.
Degrowthers are enemies to humanity - nicely put and exactly how I've felt.
Except, the business as usual we're doing, is gonna wane growth anyway. You're gonna own nothing and can't even be unhappy, cos, everything is already owned by a few and you don't even have any semblance of any form of right on anything. So, anyone talking about the other way must be the enemy of humanity! Go figure.
@aniksamiurrahman6365 your exactly the person in an argument that desperately needs to add value to the conversation so they just rattle bs off that's vaguely related to the topic... but so badly construed it's impossible to even begin a counterargument, and your friends just don't respond out of pure frustration and bewilderment of wth just exited your mouth.
@@jeffgriffith9692 Sure pal. And you're exactly the person who has no clue beyond his own bubble, a single counter argument that shows hole in your argume is a threat to your bubble. Hence the ad hominem nonsense.
What's degrowth? Degrowth in wealth to allow the population growth to continue? Of demographic degrowth so individuals can continue to increase their energy consumption and wealth without colliding with earths carrying capacity?
@CorryDMG The earth does not have a population crisis buddy. There's about a million other problems on the humanity list that come before even thinking about this. If you're trying to make an analogy, the correct one would be we have an "energy deficit" which urgently and immediately needs addressing.
Your going the same way as Closer to Truth. Off in lala land just to keep the videos going. Seriously, there is no way a Dyson Sphere could be made and there are no civilizations that advanced. But I'm sure all the Syfy fans and kids are eating this up.
“Never” and “impossible”in the actual literal definition, are HUGE words. The universe is many orders of magnitude older than human civilization and will be around for orders of magnitude longer. The burden of proof is gigantic in the face of the scale of the universe and its subsequent probability space.
Dyson swarms are trivial and there's no reason to assume no civilizations are that advanced.