How to build a Dyson Sphere

[Ranakastrasz]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP44EPB ... e=youtu.be

The video uses a lot of videogame inspired imagery, and does feel factorio-like.

Especially in the being run over by your own vehicles.
Giving up on all sources of power but solar.
Strip mining entire planets.

[leadraven]

Yeah, it's a nice channel. Except cases when they get into politics...
As I know, idea of a Dyson sphere is older then videogames .

Actually, any source of power is limited. Sun is just the largest currently available, and the only sufficient for interstellar flights.

Read also about ringworlds. And play Stellaris. If you like cool space stuff.

[Ranakastrasz]

True enough. And yea, it was named after a guy named Dyson.
Whats relevant here is the way it portrays it. Cartoony usually, but this time it uses, essentially, Idle game growth mechanics to illustrate it.
And it also feels vagely factorio-like. Manual action to automation to better smelting methods to miners to smelters to rocket launch. To strip mining a planet to send solar satellites into space, as many as you can manage.

[SonishaR]

As indicated by a condition proposed via Carl Sagan, people are at present sitting at ~73% of a Type I human progress. Yet, when we achieve that achievement in maybe a couple of hundred years (accepting we don't explode ourselves all the while), the development of a Dyson circle or, almost certain, a Dyson swarm around the Sun is most likely the way to in the long run hitting Type II.

[T-A-R]

So, all your rockets seem to be stuck in Nauvis orbit. You realized you need something interstellar to escape. You look over your shoulder to your rocket-base and imagines what needed next. After your head starts spinning you realize anyhow you will escape, you need a ton of energy to do so. The rocket base need do be upgraded to bring these solar panels up to the Sol.

I could imagine a mod for this, where rocket launches (by rocket or railgun) are rewarded with energy beams from space, Which need to be received by adequate infrastructure, replacing those space-wasting solar panels. This Dyson sphere might give you new hope to finally and forever escape from those pesky Nauvis biters.

Lol, halfway the video i hoped for some Voxel Tycoon on steriods xD

[starxplor]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld_series

The books revolve (ha!) around finding an artificial ring around a star. Not an entire sphere, but possibly easier to build because of the lesser material requirements and ease of simulating day/night.

[LordWampus]

The Sphere must grow...

[Ghoulish]

Fascinating stuff.

Astronomers questioned whether or not they had found a Dyson sphere in reality. The star in question is KIC 8462852 (often referred to as tabbys star). A brief explanation is that planet hunters can monitor the brightness off a star, and when a planet passes in front of the star the brightness drops, they know how far away the star is, it's mass and can work out the size of the planet, they can even infer what the atmosphere is made up of by analysing the light that shines through the atmosphere of the planet as it transits across the star (don't quote me on that one..).

With tabbys star, one early explanation was a Dyson sphere, as they could not explain why the light seemed to dip and vary the way it did. However these days the most likely candidate is either dust or the remanent debris from some sort of celestial body impact, though in all honesty until the clever people can prove what's going on a dyson sphere is still a (very very remote) possibility.

[Koub]

A true complete dyson sphere would not allow any light to pass through, converting all emissions from the star into energy. So if one can see a star, it doesn't have a Dyson pshere around it.

[Qon]

A true complete dyson sphere would not allow any light to pass through, converting all emissions from the star into energy. So if one can see a star, it doesn't have a Dyson pshere around it.

A Dyson swarm wouldn't emit light visible to human eyes, yes. But a Dyson swarm emits infrared light, heat radiation. That's visible to our telescopes for that frequency band.

I'm Qonsidering making a mod for going to Kardashev 1~2 scale factories. Dyson swarms are awesome!

[Koub]

Dyson swarms indeed let the light passthrough, visible and IR. Dyson spheres would probably not let much, at least not anything that would be percieved by us as a star.

[Qon]

Dyson swarms indeed let the light passthrough, visible and IR. Dyson spheres would probably not let much, at least not anything that would be percieved by us as a star.

Incorrect. Dyson swarms are a working design for what was first called Dyson sphere, which was imagined as something rigid that would probably be impossible to be built because of the forced involved exceed any material strength. So when people say Dyson sphere now you can assume they are talking about the swarm design. Because the Dyson swarm is a Dyson sphere, a type of it that works. And it's pretty spherical. It's just a way to make extra clear how the sphere would actually be built. And it's practical to build one since you can build it in stages, one reflector at a time.

A complete Dyson swarm doesn't let any human-visible light through, just like a hypothetical complete Dyson "shell", if such a thing could exist. An incomplete Dyson swarm will let human-visible light through, just like an incomplete Dyson shell.
Or phrased differently: A Dyson swarm/sphere/shell that lets through any human-visible light is by definition not actually a Dyson sphere, but just an incomplete version of it.

It is impossible (with known laws of physics) to not radiate any "light" by blocking it with matter, since any energy used/collected becomes heat which is radiated away as infrared light. An exception could be blocking light with black holes. But those emit Hawking radiation and the accretion disc that forms around massive ones sends out a lot of radiation. And black holes still bend light so they are detectable through that even if no light were actually emitted from it.

[Koub]

It is impossible (with known laws of physics) to not radiate any "light" by blocking it with matter, since any energy used/collected becomes heat which is radiated away as infrared light.

I'm perfectly aware of this, it's why I wrote

would probably not let much, at least not anything that would be percieved by us as a star.

An effective Dyson swarm/sphere absorbing the most energetic part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and only radiating black body radiation on the infrared spectrum could be detected from Earth with our current technology, but would probably not be interpreted as a regular star.

We would probably interpret it as a brown dwarf I guess, or maybe a rogue gas giant ?

[Qon]

Ok.

We would probably interpret it as a brown dwarf I guess, or maybe a rogue gas giant ?

It would still probably be very different in that it lets out no visible light and highly uniform and concentrated low frequency radiation. Clouds aren't pointlike and brown dwarfs and clouds would probably have a significantly different spectrum profile. You can't really hide in space, especially not from anything remotely close to you in power. Kardashev 2 civilizations wouldn't really have a reason to hide because they can't hide from other K2 civilizations and anything less can't possibly hurt them.

[Ghoulish]

It is impossible (with known laws of physics) to not radiate any "light" by blocking it with matter, since any energy used/collected becomes heat which is radiated away as infrared light.

The known laws of physics; when I look into human kinds history, and see our rapid advancement from let's say 10BCE, then at least for me it's quite easy to see that for an alien civilisation that's had 200,000+ years head start on us, that even something as complicated and requires such massive resources as a Dyson Shere (swarm or solid) Is frankly child's play, true Type II civilisations, let alone III...

So for me building even a solid Dyson sphere is achievable, we'll get there, assuming our fucktard politicians sort out global warming yesterday.

As for emitting light or radiation, why couldn't a system be devised that collects 100%, I see no logical reason that science could not evolve to that level. The better question might be asked as why would you hide (as Qon just posted).

[Qon]

As for emitting light or radiation, why couldn't a system be devised that collects 100%, I see no logical reason that science could not evolve to that level.

If it reflects all radiation back in again then it sounds more like a black hole bomb than a civilization. You are continuously heating up the insides of your sphere with no limit. Eventually, that breaks. In a pretty colour show visible to galaxies near and far.

If they can break thermodynamics to reverse the heating up while extracting energy and not radiating then they don't need their perpetual motion machine to hide their star. They can just use their perpetual motion machine directly. And speculation about aliens that don't follow the laws of physics at all is fairly pointless. They are gods by that point and are omnipresent and omnipowerful. It doesn't really matter if they exists or not, if they don't want to be seen they won't be seen no matter if we have been good kids all year round.