Some TIL posts really surprise you, it's crazy to me that you have never heard about this. Not being degrading or anything like that, it's just surprising.
this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2025
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There is also the Matrioshka brain, a hypothetical supercomputer powered by a Dyson sphere
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I don’t remember the math, but you lose return on investment after a certain percentage of coverage.
Dyson Grids are the future!!! 😜
The other "benefit" to the sphere is blacking out a star. Other life, should it exist, is less likely to find the structure. ITT people destroying my dreams of a big shelly boi
I would think it'd make it more likely that you're discovered when you turn your star into a black ball with a gigantic IR signature where a star should be. Any civilization with a cursory understanding of gravity and stellar spectra would turn every telescope they have on you.
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Or DYson Bubbles, which would also "cover" enough "surface" to be viable without needing god knows how many planets' worth of material
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Okay but where does the invisible hand dryer go?
Any civilization that needs that much energy would have long ago exhausted their planet's resources and gone extinct.
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.
Great author!
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?
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
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.
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I guess you would store it in chemicals like oil or create radioactive substances that are optimised for specific energy decay rates
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Wait until you learn about the even bigger ones:
I've played that Stellaris mod, pretty sweet
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.
If we could just speed up cryogenics or hibernation technology…
How about we just speed up ourselves? Build a human sized LHC and leave it running for a few millenia.
Gideon the 9th universe begins
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.
They only work during the day though.
This is what they said about solar panels too, maybe it'll work out.
we just need a bunch of batteries!
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Wait! The same problem Larry Niven’s Ringworld have also applies to Dyson Spheres? Huh! Saving to read later.
Be carful with those. You may block the light of constellation aliens use and really piss then off.
Eh, they won't find out until a few centuries later anyway
Well unless they are monitoring or are relatively close. The issue was they got annoyed cause their decedendants won't see their "holy constellation". Something like a north star to them I guess. So anyway I started a purification campaign In response.
Just put them in the Synaptic Lathe and forget about them.
Certainly humane than livestock.
...no, they won't know for a few hundred years due to the actual speed of light and vast distances of space.
It's a Stellaris reference. Once you can build Dyson spheres there's a chance your (also FTL capable) neighbors complain about you blocking their sacred star.
I usually just give them money and they forgive me.
Unless they have some fancy alien sensor with quantum entangled particles so they get an alert instantly
You're assuming they are not part of the deep state already!
"People of Earth, I am Lrrr of the planet Omicron Persei 8."
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If you want to make one you can.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1366540/Dyson_Sphere_Program/
I pirated this to check it out and enjoyed it so much that I bought it even though it's in Early Access and that's very very rare for me. I still haven't played it more though as I'm still waiting for it to come out of EA, looking very much forward to play it again.
Same, purchased after pirating. You'll need cheats to convert your pirated save to legit if you want achievements, however.
$20 is the perfect price IMO
edit: pirating this game is kinda funny to me, its a Chinese Dev. team so who knows if there are assets in the game that are not legit. I will probably buy it but I wouldn't shame anyone who did find another way to get it without purchasing it
It's a i think 5man dev team and they've poured their souls into it, I think they deserve the money
I bought the bundle with Shapez 2
both are really good
I'm the same lol. I bought several books in print after pirating the ebooks.
Damn that looks cool
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You need to watch more Star Trek, friend.
Specifically "The Next Generation", Season 6, Episode 4, " Relics".
Thank me later. 😁