A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output. The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to imagine how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy requirements once those requirements exceed what can be generated from the home planet’s resources alone. Because only a tiny fraction of a star’s energy emissions reaches the surface of any orbiting planet, building structures encircling a star would enable a civilization to harvest far more energy.

  • burgersc12@mander.xyz
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    9 days ago

    Any civilization that needs that much energy would have long ago exhausted their planet’s resources and gone extinct.

  • endeavor@sopuli.xyz
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    8 days ago

    Maybe make it a dyson fan since the sphere would only work during the daytime. In polar areas that means half a year without any energy production!

    Whereas there is always solar wind.

  • batcheck@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    Came here to say that if you like this concept, Peter Hamilton has a book series called Commonwealth Saga in the science fiction category that is excellent. Lots of pseudoscience from early 2000s in that series.

  • merdaverse@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    It’s a pretty cool concept, and I enjoyed building one in Dyson Sphere Program, but I don’t really understand how you would transport that amount of energy to where you need it. Are they like mirrors that redirect and focus light to some point?

    • kerrigan778@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      Presumably superconductors are a given at that level of technology. But also at megastructure scale, we could easily talk about very exotic energy transfer methods. Mirrors, microwave transmission antennas, kilometer wide conduits of highly conductive “ground” material, large scale production of fusion fuel, maybe usable power from heat difference is such an efficient process at any scale that the sphere just has a hot side on the inside (towards the sun) and a cold side on the outside (towards cosmic background) and anyone who needs power just patches in a heat pipe to the inside surface.

      Actually there’s a lot there on that last one. Large efficient power plants could be built anywhere where people needed them hooked with big heat pumps into the inner surface and outer radiator surface, smaller applications could just hook into the inner surface and radiate heat passively and let the climate control deal with it. Rogue energy thieves could be tracked down by scanning for unregistered cold spots on the inner surface.

    • Hadriscus@lemm.ee
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      9 days ago

      Split into several laser beams targeting a bunch of big-ass converters in line around the equator. But it would have to be extremely accurate and route a fraction of total power unless you want to pulverize earth

    • Geobloke@lemm.ee
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      10 days ago

      I guess you would store it in chemicals like oil or create radioactive substances that are optimised for specific energy decay rates

  • Einar@lemm.ee
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    10 days ago

    You need to watch more Star Trek, friend.

    Specifically “The Next Generation”, Season 6, Episode 4, " Relics".

    Thank me later. 😁

  • halyk.the.red@lemmy.ml
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    10 days ago

    A pinnacle of science, a wonder of engineering, that we will never get to see in our lifetimes. Instead, we get to see Taiwan get nuked or something, I don’t know. I don’t follow the news much, I only know I’m disappointed.

    • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
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      10 days ago

      Taiwan is too valuable to nuke. It will be squeezed with a lot of Navy to land attacks, destroying many of the places people live but not the places they work. Then urban warfare will be the rest and it will probably be death of millions.