Oolite Bulletins

El Viejo wrote:

Seeing mention of SETI... someone is now actively searching for Dyson Spheres.

An interesting idea, but certainly they can't be looking for any "ideal" Dyson spheres - those seem quite impractical and probably not feasible. Something ring-like might be though .

CommRLock78 wrote:

El Viejo wrote:

Seeing mention of SETI... someone is now actively searching for Dyson Spheres.

An interesting idea, but certainly they can't be looking for any "ideal" Dyson spheres - those seem quite impractical and probably not feasible.

… and invisible, one might add. (What do you want to detect from Earth, if the Dyson Sphere "harvests" the complete energy output of a star, meaning that nothing detectable would reach Earth?)

Commander McLane wrote:

(What do you want to detect from Earth, if the Dyson Sphere "harvests" the complete energy output of a star, meaning that nothing detectable would reach Earth?)

You can’t “harvest” energy, or use it up, only transform it. A Dyson sphere, compete or not, must necessarily radiate as much energy as it absorbs after it reaches some equilibrium temperature. (You could store it in batteries or kinetic storage, but you’d still need to radiate it after you use it for something useful.) One that makes good use of the energy will radiate it as infra-red or other low EM frequencies. So the signature of a Dyson sphere is an object that radiates as much energy as a star, but compressed into surprisingly low frequencies.

Here's an interesting thought.
If a race is building a Dyson sphere around a star we are observing, over a period of time it would fade and eventually disappear. Would we be able to work out what was happening, or just get baffled by this 'unknown astronomical phenomenon'.

Smivs wrote:

Here's an interesting thought.
If a race is building a Dyson sphere around a star we are observing, over a period of time it would fade and eventually disappear. Would we be able to work out what was happening, or just get baffled by this 'unknown astronomical phenomenon'.

Dyson spheres are big, and building them would be a long-term project. Not long-term like planting new trees in the town centre and watching them grow. Not long-term like placing the first stone for the chapel that will eventually be a cathedral. Not long-term like the Long Now Foundation’s ten thousand year clock. I mean serious business long term.

I rather doubt our civilization will exist long enough to be able to notice such a change.

Ahruman wrote:

I rather doubt our civilization will exist long enough to be able to notice such a change.

Heh! Ever the optimist, eh?
It does raise the serious point though that a civilisation would have to be incredibly devoted to this sort of task and sufficiently stable over a long time to see it through. Probably why we don't see them.

The great advantage of a Dyson sphere is that you don't need to keep buying bags ...

There's also the possibility of a matrioshka brain, as a variation on a Dyson sphere.

I think, at the actual level of technology that is ours, if all countries would unite and make their whole wealth common, we could build some kind of energy collectors at the 2 main Lagrangian points on the Earth orbit. It would be already a titanic task, money speaking...
But for now, we have enough possibilities to build such "green" collectors on Earth itself, and that already would cost a lot.
But our actual level of starvation, energy-wise, is not enough yet to justify such work...

Kasero wrote:

I think, at the actual level of technology that is ours, if all countries would unite and make their whole wealth common, we could build some kind of energy collectors at the 2 main Lagrangian points on the Earth orbit.

The problem would be running the extension cord back to Earth ... We could beam it back as a maser or something but that might be dangerous ... presumably such a maser would have to touch down at the poles. Adding an extra component of solar energy would almost certainly cause havoc with the weather.

All this talk of Dyson brings to mind a really corny sci-fi novel I read years ago, wherein there was an alien race called the Dyson (I think).
It was so poor that the 'author' had had to self-publish it.

Disembodied wrote:

The problem would be running the extension cord back to Earth ...

<Smivs tries to imagine changing the fuse if it blew!>

Commander McLane wrote:

… and invisible, one might add. (What do you want to detect from Earth, if the Dyson Sphere "harvests" the complete energy output of a star, meaning that nothing detectable would reach Earth?)

LMAO Excellent point.

I've just found this update on this story.