Dyson Sphere

[ΤhatOneNewbie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_Sphere

random discussion yay

Dyson Sphere is a hypothetical system that involves a bunch of satellites surrounding a star to capture it's energy, and allow people living inside the Dyson Sphere to use that energy, pretty much. It gets more complicated I suppose.

Would we be able to create such a system in the future, and how long do you think it would take us right now if we were to build one this instant?

[Rammjet]

I've heard of these before, imagine the mammoth amounts of material and energy required to construct them, the energy to make them could fiesably come from the star itself, but finding and extracting all the material required could be very tricky, as well as designs that allowed maintinence.

In the future this might be a possibility, but I wouldn't be able to estimate the time taken to build one then or now and right now I don't think it would be possible.

[X-Ray]

isn't it a vaccum too?

[Lightnin!!!]

I thought this was going to be about Vacuum Cleaners.

._.

[Rammjet]

isn't it a vaccum too?

That's dyson ball, but it is equipped with the power of the sun.

[Rammjet]

Double post: do you imagine that an organic dyson sphere could form spontaneously? Imagine a life form in a nebula, that orbits a star. Permitting the life form prolifferates faster than the nebula collapses into planets it may influence the material to surround the sun in a structure conducive to the life form's survival.

[Chip]

I was about to say what has JV come to to talk about hoovers. :3

[Rammjet]

depending on your definition of spontaneously, but I think it would take a while for something organic to circle around an entire star .. unless man had an efficient way to produce that organic dyson sphere

It would take time, but it would speed up exponentially, amino acids exist in nebulae in space so I think it might be a possibility that some nebulae are a floating haze of organisms.

[Agravaine]

I don't exactly think that would be feasible anytime soon. Think of the massive amounts of material needed to build it.

[Derpface]

Why encompass a sun with satellites to harvest its energy when you can just make one through fusion of hydrogen atoms 'n' shit.

[御坂 美琴]

ill go try this on kerbal space program and report back! :V lol .. but on a serious note, i think it costs $8k to launch your own satellite, so go do some math and the stick it to the electric company! ..if only it were that easy lol

[Wolframium]

Because of gravity, making a dyson sphere as it is commonly depicted doesn't really make that much sense. With something like a dyson swarm, where you have a lot of (still quite large) satellites orbiting the sun, collecting electricity, it is quite stable because each satellite is in its own stable orbit. On the other hand, a ringworld or a dyson shell has no net gravitational interaction with the star, and thus would be constantly trying to move out of position without something to stabilize it.

On a related note, read The Ringworld and The Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven.