Astronomers Are on the Hunt for Dyson Spheres | Hacker News Reader

Astronomers Are on the Hunt for Dyson Spheres

universetoday.com

9 pointsbookofjoe14 comments

This seems like one of those things that we think might exist because it's something we can think of right now. But in the future the idea of building structures like this might seem like a huge waste of resources or have some other problem. Like trying to think of ways to make horses faster before cars were invented.

I guess even if that’s the the hope is in the almost but not quite infinite universe someone has gone and done it anyway.

But you’re right, I’m forming the opinion that if you’re that advanced you can essentially choose what size you want to be. And if you can do that - and eg live on the surface of a red dwarf for billions of years - why do you need to be expansionist at all? Is it for the view?

Even your idea of living on red dwarf suffers from the same problem that Dyson spheres and really the whole kardishev scale suffers from: They’re bad 1950s sci-fi. Just because you can do the math, doesn’t mean they exist.

Not only do you have to have the technology to do any of these these things (which is not a given), but somehow you have to have a civilization dedicated to doing it over the course of thousands of years.

No. Just no. It’s just fantasy.

Case in point: We know there are no type 3 civilizations anywhere in the observable universe. V

The point I was making is more that just because you can use X amount of energy or resources doesnt mean you might want to.

Therefore - why expect advanced civilisation to be detectable? Just because you could be type 3 doesnt necessarily mean you have to be.

Arguably you might _not_ want to - considering 3 body problem game theory and potentially accelerating the heat death of the universe.

Or maybe they all just leave. Or maybe they don't exist.

So to say its fantasy is essentially assuming we've proved a negative. That's not a hugely rational position to take.

is there a concept for a civilization type that actually controls the entire universe, under simulation theory? seems you can keep going that parent reality may be a simulation and so on.

Have you ever seen the math for simulation theory? It’s stupid. It pretty much starts with, what has enough entropy to hold the simulation, and then figuring out what could have that many bits of entropy. Which gives you a result like, Sagittarius A*. Which means that the simulation is magically programmed by the material falling to the event horizon of a supermassive blackhole, and the data is red out of the “computer” through hawking radiation at a rate measured in bits per millennia.

https://youtu.be/0GLgZvTCbaA

Math doesn't apply, not the same math. If all the constants we have are arbitrary numbers set by the simulation. Like the speed of light. Is x, here but maybe its y one sim up - such that y is 10x ... and maybe computing power is 10000x on similar hardware we use... each level up would use similar hardware with the laws of physics possibly working differently giving more compute.... until its impossible to go further, but then maybe the universe you create just becomes smaller and smaller until its the size of a galaxy...etc.

That's my take anyways, I'm a programmer not mathematician.

what if instead we can find a way to create controlled micro stars... more portable. I mean would you just use batteries to fuel spaceships? I guess that's basically what fusion is trying to solve. though the fact we're maybe close to fusion it could be the natural progression.

I think when it comes to large scale predictions of the future our imaginations are rather limited. We're just getting to a point where we think we should take an umbrella with us when we leave the house in the morning. And sometimes that's not even right.

The next step for us as a species is trying to survive on this planet in the long term. Not nearly a given.

Speculating on what far away, far more advanced civilizations might be up to is just for entertainment, nothing to take seriously.

The earth is turning into a sort of poor man's Dyson sphere. A century ago, advancing telecommunications involved building ever more powerful transmitters. Today, the bulk of our communication occurs via enclosed waveguides such as fiber optics and coaxial cables. Our wireless comms are increasingly designed to operate at lower and lower power levels, using signal protocols that are designed to resemble noise. If we colonize the Moon or a neighboring planet, we'll probably communicate via a laser beam. Long distance power transmission will be converted to DC if it becomes more efficient.

A century after the dawn of the radio age, we're going dark.

We are talking about megastructures taking millenia to be build, requiring more resources than the ones that can be found in a single solar system, and that probably requires materials that may not be possible at all.

And they are an answer for a problem that we, with our limited knowledge, can think of. They may be the wrong answer for civilizations that should be far more advanced than us to be able try to do something like that.

But taking an idea similar to the Three Body Problem one. What your civilization should do if within a reasonable distance you find a Dyson sphere already built or in process of building, specially if it is far outside your technological capabilities, and knowing that if they require a Dyson Sphere then that civilization is actively expansive? Doing something to harm that may be a reasonable course of action, and it may not require very advanced technology (like sending an accelerating device that don't need to slow down).

it could be done in a decade or two given enough ai drones and Asteroid mining and moon base factories....5 billion, 50 billion, 100 billion ai could keep scaling up it's drones till the timetable drops.

A Dyson sphere at a distance similar to the one from Earth to Sun needs more matter than the one that can be found in a single solar system. Ringworld had the surfaces of several planets flatted out in real scale among all its geography, and it was just a thin strip around the sun. You can go all you want in exponentially build drones, but you'll need matter for the drones too.

How do you stop a Dyson Sphere from drifting over to touch its star?

Trying to keep the sphere equidistant from the star at all points seems to me to be too unstable an arrangement to work.

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