The material and technology needed for such a task, I believe it's incomprehensible. All of our thoughts and ideas on this subject combined, would hardly scratch the surface of "endless" possibilities. Its fun to ponder about, but one could argue our perspective is too narrow. We could wonder about this for a lifetime, and still not be remotely close to the enlightenment needed for an accurate theory.
I heard somewhere someone did the math and concluded a sphere to encompass the Sun with a radius matching Earth's orbit would require more mass than is available in the Solar System. I don't recall the thickness being mentioned though, so I'm unsure how informative that claim is. Regardless, you point is completely accurate; such a structure realized will be completely different from those theorized. The science fiction still is a lot of fun though!
@@TheFictionMethod and that's just pure mass. I'm sure we couldn't make a dyson sphere with dirt and gravel! theoretically we would need to harvest multiple solar systems. Possibly wiping out any chance those stars had at intelligent life, and who knows what repercussions that would have on our own solar system.
@@TheFictionMethod When you look at the rate the human race is advancing technologically, I don't think its too far fetched to believe we will reach interstellar travel by 2400-2500 if we don't kill ourselves. We may even figure it out sooner with AI, but when you look at the big picture, all of the technical advancement is starting to de-evolve us. We may see evolutions to combat cardiovascular issues if we don't solve that problem with technology also (I theorize), but I don't see any good evolutions happening besides ones that will allow us be to be lazy, especially with the help of AI.
@@theabomination396 I'm a little torn on if this were the best time or the worst time to make this suggestion. On the "best side" the current story I'm working on involves working through the technological eras of man, though not in a historical way. (When a technology was discovered is irrelevant in the story, just the discovery and application of it.) On the "worst side" I just started a different series of videos that are more story-based than science-based. But I'll do it anyway. It is an interesting topic I've give thought to before, so I'll try to record a video this week, with it coming out next week. (All of my videos thus far I record and schedule for the following week.)
I did one once for a series of Sci-Fi campaigns and such. The basic premise was far, far into the future the last surviving AI of a cataclysmic intergalactic war settled in a (comparatively primitive, but still advanced to us) galaxy and took it over (via a lot of meddling and power play). They set up a Dyson Sphere around a star not so much for energy collection, but for both the statement and a bit of defense. They also recreated the species that had built them and housed them in the sphere. The statement came in that doing something like this *is* hard, and the raw materials came from harvesting entire star systems of those that resisted. And defense came in that they could leave with the structure should those that defeated them appear (while using the people already in the galaxy as fodder to slow them down). The difficulties in maintaining the structure, however, made for interesting moralistic challenges when trying to defeat this AI. Obviously the status quo is evil and such... but if you turn off the AI/crash it/etc? Who maintains the sphere? Nobody. All those people inside die and now you're responsible for that, since there's no realistic way to evacuate the population before the sphere becomes uninhabitable. It did, as you suggest, require constant fine tuning to keep it properly around the star (any imbalance would cause the star to punch into it, likely repeatedly, until the addition of that much heavy material killed the star which would probably go nova). Flares had to be directed away safely. Heat had to be constantly shed and managed (with the external surface glowing brightly except for a few patches meant to simulate 'night' for the populace) and repairs constantly made. I quite enjoyed setting up the scenario in which the players spent session after session wrangling with the huge moral question it provided. However, I think you're right - outside of a few highly specific scenarios like that one, it doesn't really make sense to build one. Ultimately anyone who could build one wouldn't need to, as you basically need an entire galaxy for one and by that point you have more energy generation than a star at your disposal.
a similar moral conundrum is created in the novel Anvil of Stars (1992) by Greg Bear (well worth the read imho). when the earth is obliterated by a self replicating robotic menace, a benefactor species appears to save who they can and provide the tools for revenge (we are entitled to it, its galactic law after all...), and so a crew of humans set out for justice against the killers of humanity! they encounter other destroyed species, other ships of the law, other survivors, and eventually discover what they suspect is the home system of the killers, but something is amiss. the system is brimming with life; millions of intelligent species co-existing, trillions of individuals living rich & meaningful lives, commerce, art, mega-structures aplenty, and eons of peaceful history. but is it all a trap? a carefully constructed camouflage and psychological defence against inevitable justice? the human crew faces a choice: justice for lost humanity, but at what cost? aboard the ship reason and democracy fail, and without certainty the trigger is pulled...
I often say a lot of "big idea" hyperfuturistic sci-fi basically reflects the era of western Imperialism for reasons like this. The European nations prospered and became the hubs of art, science, etc but were built on a parasitic system at the complete total expense of the poorer nations they conquered. The Sci-Fi genre was born in the era those empires were at their peak so it's no surprise a lot of that mentality shaped the genre with tropes like tech level being directly tied to consumption and environmental exploitation, megastructures being prominent reflecting people's obsession with megaprojects in the early-mid 1900s, and even the concept of "uplifting" is essentially rooted in colonialism with White Man's Burden. A lot of these outlandish hyperfuturistic sci-fi settings are presented as a wondrous vision of the distant future but in reality they are a reflection of our dark past. When we write about these things we're essentially commenting about ourselves. I personally believe Anvil of Stars was also a meta take on the usual sci-fi "hyper advanced utopian civilization" narrative probing more into this angle and pointing out the issues with it.
I’m pretty sure it was Kardashev who first used the term dyson sphere. Also, theres a good article about the mechanical impossibility of making a dyson sphere by Jason T. Wright (Dyson Spheres) that’s pretty interesting Also, I don’t recall if it was in this article, but a point was made showing that it could be possible to force energy back into the star to prolong its lifespan which was mindblowing to me when I read it
I have my own essay lengths rants about these disgusting monstrosities that somehow became considered science fiction canon. TLDR? Any sufficiently advanced civilization will become more energy efficient than a star. It would be easier to acquire mass from other sources and convert it into greater amounts of energy, quicker. That's just the biggest practical reason.
It's a thought i had myself the first time i heard of the idea. Assuming that material was indestructible, what would happen to the sun if the energy just kept building up
I'm not certain, but that is an interesting question for an astrophysicist. Could the energy cause the star to swell, like when other materials are warmed? Could it reach into the core eventually and enable higher levels of fusion, or will the pressure not be enough for this? That is actually kind of a funny thought; could you pump so much energy into a star this way to actually shut down fusion, because the pressure and therefore the density of the fuel is too low?
Awesome question. But be more specific; how is the energy "building up"? Is this material also impervious to heat? This would mean an accelerating surface burn-off until core instability and then nova, if I had to guess; but a nova wouldn't be possible. The energy released and then reflected back at a single point would likely compress the star into a black hole at some point, in my uneducated opinion; assuming this material exists.... (It does, and it's easy to make.... For some [body] out there) What if instead of a sphere, a "giant mylar balloon"? The external solar winds would keep the balloon inflated perfectly equidistant with the star centered.
I feel like that everyone that has a passing interest in this knows that swarm and sphere are used interchangably and getting hung up on the fact that simplified depictions aren't truly accurate is the sci-fi equivalent of getting really invested in telling the matches in WWF are fake.
4:10 what do you mean by "this material would melt"? Mercury is in tidal lock with Sun (it means it faces Sun with same side all time), so why doeasn't happened to it yet? Could you please enlighten me: why Mercury doesn't melted yet? And also why Solar Flares didn't destroyed it yet (like you predicted would happen to Dyson Sphere).
I actually caught myself on that later in the video. When I caught myself, as I recall I mentioned how all of the volatiles have been burned away, which would include the atmosphere and water. As far as the mass from solar flares and the damage they would do, a couple things occur to me as I think about them now, but it is a very interesting question I want to give more thought to. One is Mercury has a radius of about 2440 km, and I'm pretty sure the majority of Dyson sphere designs are far thinner, so there is less mass to absorb the impact. The other is Mercury does have a magnetic field that helps deal with CMEs and such, but a Dyson sphere, if it had one, would be a very different shape. You would be within the sphere, as opposed to outside of it, so as the charged particles come in, the field would need to reflect them back, approaching a reversal of momentum, as opposed to just deflecting them at a lower angle, so less momentum needs to be changed.
I would have thought that a civilisation capable of building megastructures (understatement) is also advanced enough to harvest zero point energy, if it exists, or at least the energy bound inside atoms more efficiently than we do. And what is the nature of the energy collected by a Dyson structure? Is it a glorified solar panel? Is it just an elaborate means of producing electricity?
It is logistically and technologically impossible for humans in the current day and age. I think the point is that it is reserved for the "angels" type of aliens, not the "ape" type of aliens.
This is a good video and gave a lot of food for thought, but I don't think you understand how heat transfer works. You can't "vent" heat, but you can vent gas, and you can use venting to get rid of heat by venting out hot gas and replacing it with cold gas, but heat itself doesn't vent away. Heat escapes hot objects by radiating. The hotter an object is, the higher the frequency of its radiation. Humans radiate light in the infrared range, the sun radiates up to ultraviolet, and supernovas and accretion discs can radiate up to X-rays and gamma rays. A Dyson sphere wouldn't heat up forever. As it got hotter it would radiate its heat faster and faster until it reached an equilibrium, and because of the inverse square law, that equilibrium would be cooler than the surface of the star. It would definitely be too hot for anyone to live on it, but it would be cooler than the melting point of some metals, making it possible to build, even if it is astronomically impractical. Something that could build up forever are mass coronal ejections, and solar wind. These would create a growing pressure that would have to be vented to avoid blowing the sphere apart, but that's not really the same thing as heat.
Good points, all. I use the term "vent" quite generically here to mean gotten rid out. In my story that involved a Dyson sphere the vents worked by taking the energy collected on the inside of the sphere and emitting it as radiation out into space. By the way, either for your benefit or anyone else who reads this comment, what you're describing is black body radiation and is why there can be no green stars. Green is too central in the visible spectrum so when the heat of an object would primarily radiate green light, it's radiating the other colors too, giving us white light.
Dyson Spheres and the Kardashev scale are rooted in the mentality that the advancement of a civilization is directly correlated by how consumptive it is and how badly it can screw up the environment, which is a very early-mid 1900s (dated and problematic) way of thinking to say the very least. I dislike both concepts and science fiction needs to ditch them. A ton of science fiction concepts are rooted in dated and problematic 1800s and 1900s mindsets, actually, a notable one being "uplifting" which is literally just white man's burden colonialism. On one hand it's to be expected because the science fiction genre was born from European authors in the time of European imperialism and when western nations were obsessed with megaconstructs and other huge projects, but on the other hand it shows how we've changed as a society and that certain elements of scifi canon are better left in the past.
If I where an intelligent species that was super advanced I would probably feel like using such a tremendous amount of resources on a Dyson's sphere is ridiculous. I feel like by the time you become that intelligent to where you could build something like that You've probably already found a way to do something for Infinite amount of energy on a smaller scale than building megastructures that surrounds a whole a$$ star. There's probably seamless ways to make as much energy as you want without having to do something as archaic as a Dyson's sphere. Also how stupid do you have to be to build something that can literally give away your Position to God knows what in outer space? A true intelligent species would stay quiet and do everything in the dark.
A Dyson Swarm is more plausible to be honest.
thats exactly what he said multiple times
The material and technology needed for such a task, I believe it's incomprehensible. All of our thoughts and ideas on this subject combined, would hardly scratch the surface of "endless" possibilities. Its fun to ponder about, but one could argue our perspective is too narrow. We could wonder about this for a lifetime, and still not be remotely close to the enlightenment needed for an accurate theory.
I heard somewhere someone did the math and concluded a sphere to encompass the Sun with a radius matching Earth's orbit would require more mass than is available in the Solar System. I don't recall the thickness being mentioned though, so I'm unsure how informative that claim is.
Regardless, you point is completely accurate; such a structure realized will be completely different from those theorized. The science fiction still is a lot of fun though!
@@TheFictionMethod and that's just pure mass. I'm sure we couldn't make a dyson sphere with dirt and gravel! theoretically we would need to harvest multiple solar systems. Possibly wiping out any chance those stars had at intelligent life, and who knows what repercussions that would have on our own solar system.
@@TheFictionMethod When you look at the rate the human race is advancing technologically, I don't think its too far fetched to believe we will reach interstellar travel by 2400-2500 if we don't kill ourselves. We may even figure it out sooner with AI, but when you look at the big picture, all of the technical advancement is starting to de-evolve us. We may see evolutions to combat cardiovascular issues if we don't solve that problem with technology also (I theorize), but I don't see any good evolutions happening besides ones that will allow us be to be lazy, especially with the help of AI.
@@theabomination396 I'm a little torn on if this were the best time or the worst time to make this suggestion. On the "best side" the current story I'm working on involves working through the technological eras of man, though not in a historical way. (When a technology was discovered is irrelevant in the story, just the discovery and application of it.) On the "worst side" I just started a different series of videos that are more story-based than science-based. But I'll do it anyway.
It is an interesting topic I've give thought to before, so I'll try to record a video this week, with it coming out next week. (All of my videos thus far I record and schedule for the following week.)
I'm in love with your "fix" of using white dwarves. Very deeply loaded to think about.
I did one once for a series of Sci-Fi campaigns and such. The basic premise was far, far into the future the last surviving AI of a cataclysmic intergalactic war settled in a (comparatively primitive, but still advanced to us) galaxy and took it over (via a lot of meddling and power play). They set up a Dyson Sphere around a star not so much for energy collection, but for both the statement and a bit of defense. They also recreated the species that had built them and housed them in the sphere. The statement came in that doing something like this *is* hard, and the raw materials came from harvesting entire star systems of those that resisted. And defense came in that they could leave with the structure should those that defeated them appear (while using the people already in the galaxy as fodder to slow them down).
The difficulties in maintaining the structure, however, made for interesting moralistic challenges when trying to defeat this AI. Obviously the status quo is evil and such... but if you turn off the AI/crash it/etc? Who maintains the sphere? Nobody. All those people inside die and now you're responsible for that, since there's no realistic way to evacuate the population before the sphere becomes uninhabitable. It did, as you suggest, require constant fine tuning to keep it properly around the star (any imbalance would cause the star to punch into it, likely repeatedly, until the addition of that much heavy material killed the star which would probably go nova). Flares had to be directed away safely. Heat had to be constantly shed and managed (with the external surface glowing brightly except for a few patches meant to simulate 'night' for the populace) and repairs constantly made.
I quite enjoyed setting up the scenario in which the players spent session after session wrangling with the huge moral question it provided.
However, I think you're right - outside of a few highly specific scenarios like that one, it doesn't really make sense to build one. Ultimately anyone who could build one wouldn't need to, as you basically need an entire galaxy for one and by that point you have more energy generation than a star at your disposal.
a similar moral conundrum is created in the novel Anvil of Stars (1992) by Greg Bear (well worth the read imho).
when the earth is obliterated by a self replicating robotic menace, a benefactor species appears to save who they can and provide the tools for revenge (we are entitled to it, its galactic law after all...), and so a crew of humans set out for justice against the killers of humanity! they encounter other destroyed species, other ships of the law, other survivors, and eventually discover what they suspect is the home system of the killers, but something is amiss. the system is brimming with life; millions of intelligent species co-existing, trillions of individuals living rich & meaningful lives, commerce, art, mega-structures aplenty, and eons of peaceful history. but is it all a trap? a carefully constructed camouflage and psychological defence against inevitable justice?
the human crew faces a choice: justice for lost humanity, but at what cost? aboard the ship reason and democracy fail, and without certainty the trigger is pulled...
I often say a lot of "big idea" hyperfuturistic sci-fi basically reflects the era of western Imperialism for reasons like this. The European nations prospered and became the hubs of art, science, etc but were built on a parasitic system at the complete total expense of the poorer nations they conquered. The Sci-Fi genre was born in the era those empires were at their peak so it's no surprise a lot of that mentality shaped the genre with tropes like tech level being directly tied to consumption and environmental exploitation, megastructures being prominent reflecting people's obsession with megaprojects in the early-mid 1900s, and even the concept of "uplifting" is essentially rooted in colonialism with White Man's Burden.
A lot of these outlandish hyperfuturistic sci-fi settings are presented as a wondrous vision of the distant future but in reality they are a reflection of our dark past. When we write about these things we're essentially commenting about ourselves. I personally believe Anvil of Stars was also a meta take on the usual sci-fi "hyper advanced utopian civilization" narrative probing more into this angle and pointing out the issues with it.
I’m pretty sure it was Kardashev who first used the term dyson sphere. Also, theres a good article about the mechanical impossibility of making a dyson sphere by Jason T. Wright (Dyson Spheres) that’s pretty interesting
Also, I don’t recall if it was in this article, but a point was made showing that it could be possible to force energy back into the star to prolong its lifespan which was mindblowing to me when I read it
I have my own essay lengths rants about these disgusting monstrosities that somehow became considered science fiction canon.
TLDR? Any sufficiently advanced civilization will become more energy efficient than a star. It would be easier to acquire mass from other sources and convert it into greater amounts of energy, quicker. That's just the biggest practical reason.
It's a thought i had myself the first time i heard of the idea.
Assuming that material was indestructible, what would happen to the sun if the energy just kept building up
I'm not certain, but that is an interesting question for an astrophysicist. Could the energy cause the star to swell, like when other materials are warmed? Could it reach into the core eventually and enable higher levels of fusion, or will the pressure not be enough for this? That is actually kind of a funny thought; could you pump so much energy into a star this way to actually shut down fusion, because the pressure and therefore the density of the fuel is too low?
Awesome question. But be more specific; how is the energy "building up"? Is this material also impervious to heat?
This would mean an accelerating surface burn-off until core instability and then nova, if I had to guess; but a nova wouldn't be possible. The energy released and then reflected back at a single point would likely compress the star into a black hole at some point, in my uneducated opinion; assuming this material exists.... (It does, and it's easy to make.... For some [body] out there)
What if instead of a sphere, a "giant mylar balloon"? The external solar winds would keep the balloon inflated perfectly equidistant with the star centered.
I feel like that everyone that has a passing interest in this knows that swarm and sphere are used interchangably and getting hung up on the fact that simplified depictions aren't truly accurate is the sci-fi equivalent of getting really invested in telling the matches in WWF are fake.
4:10 what do you mean by "this material would melt"? Mercury is in tidal lock with Sun (it means it faces Sun with same side all time), so why doeasn't happened to it yet? Could you please enlighten me: why Mercury doesn't melted yet? And also why Solar Flares didn't destroyed it yet (like you predicted would happen to Dyson Sphere).
I actually caught myself on that later in the video. When I caught myself, as I recall I mentioned how all of the volatiles have been burned away, which would include the atmosphere and water.
As far as the mass from solar flares and the damage they would do, a couple things occur to me as I think about them now, but it is a very interesting question I want to give more thought to. One is Mercury has a radius of about 2440 km, and I'm pretty sure the majority of Dyson sphere designs are far thinner, so there is less mass to absorb the impact. The other is Mercury does have a magnetic field that helps deal with CMEs and such, but a Dyson sphere, if it had one, would be a very different shape. You would be within the sphere, as opposed to outside of it, so as the charged particles come in, the field would need to reflect them back, approaching a reversal of momentum, as opposed to just deflecting them at a lower angle, so less momentum needs to be changed.
I would have thought that a civilisation capable of building megastructures (understatement) is also advanced enough to harvest zero point energy, if it exists, or at least the energy bound inside atoms more efficiently than we do. And what is the nature of the energy collected by a Dyson structure? Is it a glorified solar panel? Is it just an elaborate means of producing electricity?
It is logistically and technologically impossible for humans in the current day and age. I think the point is that it is reserved for the "angels" type of aliens, not the "ape" type of aliens.
I liked this thank you
This is a good video and gave a lot of food for thought, but I don't think you understand how heat transfer works. You can't "vent" heat, but you can vent gas, and you can use venting to get rid of heat by venting out hot gas and replacing it with cold gas, but heat itself doesn't vent away. Heat escapes hot objects by radiating. The hotter an object is, the higher the frequency of its radiation. Humans radiate light in the infrared range, the sun radiates up to ultraviolet, and supernovas and accretion discs can radiate up to X-rays and gamma rays.
A Dyson sphere wouldn't heat up forever. As it got hotter it would radiate its heat faster and faster until it reached an equilibrium, and because of the inverse square law, that equilibrium would be cooler than the surface of the star. It would definitely be too hot for anyone to live on it, but it would be cooler than the melting point of some metals, making it possible to build, even if it is astronomically impractical.
Something that could build up forever are mass coronal ejections, and solar wind. These would create a growing pressure that would have to be vented to avoid blowing the sphere apart, but that's not really the same thing as heat.
Good points, all.
I use the term "vent" quite generically here to mean gotten rid out. In my story that involved a Dyson sphere the vents worked by taking the energy collected on the inside of the sphere and emitting it as radiation out into space.
By the way, either for your benefit or anyone else who reads this comment, what you're describing is black body radiation and is why there can be no green stars. Green is too central in the visible spectrum so when the heat of an object would primarily radiate green light, it's radiating the other colors too, giving us white light.
Dyson Spheres and the Kardashev scale are rooted in the mentality that the advancement of a civilization is directly correlated by how consumptive it is and how badly it can screw up the environment, which is a very early-mid 1900s (dated and problematic) way of thinking to say the very least. I dislike both concepts and science fiction needs to ditch them. A ton of science fiction concepts are rooted in dated and problematic 1800s and 1900s mindsets, actually, a notable one being "uplifting" which is literally just white man's burden colonialism. On one hand it's to be expected because the science fiction genre was born from European authors in the time of European imperialism and when western nations were obsessed with megaconstructs and other huge projects, but on the other hand it shows how we've changed as a society and that certain elements of scifi canon are better left in the past.
If I where an intelligent species that was super advanced I would probably feel like using such a tremendous amount of resources on a Dyson's sphere is ridiculous. I feel like by the time you become that intelligent to where you could build something like that You've probably already found a way to do something for Infinite amount of energy on a smaller scale than building megastructures that surrounds a whole a$$ star. There's probably seamless ways to make as much energy as you want without having to do something as archaic as a Dyson's sphere. Also how stupid do you have to be to build something that can literally give away your Position to God knows what in outer space? A true intelligent species would stay quiet and do everything in the dark.
You jus a hater. Watch me build my Dyson sphere blud
These structures would take too long to make it's just fantasy.