/sci/ - Science & Math

>>11785266
>big solar battery
yeah but, why tho?

>>11785286
the more power you have the more things you can do with it

>>11785292
There's enough power there to do things like warp space.

How is the energy 'beamed' to where it is needed? How is it collected there? What happens to earth if we blot out the sun?

Where do we get enough materials to build the millions of satellites?

>>11785422
Mercury. It says so on the picture

>>11785383
>how is the energy 'beamed' to where it is needed?
Energy beams
>How is it collected there?
Energy collectors
>What happens to earth if we blot out the sun?
We die

>>11785266
MUST CONSOOM

>>11785266
this is so ignorant. Check your privilege, only a white man thinks he can build a wall around the sun and not his own country.

>>11785266
Dyson swarm would be the correct term here.

>>11785768
we aren't picky anon, we'll take either

That's just a massive cope for nuclear-fusion-lacking civilizationlets.

>>11785820
at that stage it's better to use fusion of solar hydrogen than your own hydrogen, there's more of it and it's going to waste

>>11785383
>How is the energy beamed?
Could be lasers or phased arrays.
>How is it collected?
Basically solar-thermal receivers, they get extremely hot and transfer that heat to working fluid to move turbines and generate electrical power.
>What happens to earth if we blot out the sun?
Even a pretty densely packed dyson swarm wouldn't obscure much of the sun's light, maybe just a couple percent of it's total output.

>>11785910
Would it be feasible with current technology to build and deploy a small prototype?

>>11785952
Feasible but improbable due to the pathetically slow and unambitious design philosophy and launch cadence of the space industry. Hopefully that will change soon with the coming generation of reusable heavy lift rockets.

>>11785266
love how these OMG SCIENCE youtubers make these videos acting like humanity will have the capacity to build anything like this for thousands of years at minimum

>>11786005
>thousands of years at minimum
You can't know that. All our technology was developed in the last couple hundred years. Boomers grew up without phones or computers. For all we know we might have some real crazy shit in a few generations. Or we might not but thousands of years seems quite a long time

>>11786023
We know that the physical limits of our technology are being reached. We've developed all the easy things already

>>11786023
Blackpillers are the ultimate retards, it's pointless to even interact with them. Hopefully their delusion that nothing new or good can ever be created will drive them all to suicide soon.

>>11786034
>We know that the physical limits of our technology are being reached
Source?

>>11785820
Dyson Sphere builders are bragger civilisations. You got fusion? Cute. Our civilisation IS an insanely large fusion reactor.

>>11785952
you could see solar powers space probes and ISS as small scale prototypes

we will probably start with something like this

>>11785952
define "prototype"

technically any satellite or probe that gathers solar power is already a prototype of a dyson swarm

>>11785266

he thinks we could do even 0.000001% of the shit needed in the pic

may I remind you that NASA is "trying" to launch the James Webb telescope for 13 years now

>>11785266
>The universe is mine to consume and ruin its natural beauty, that of which gave me life and everything I see.

Yeah fuck off OP. Stop watching Star Trek and fisting Elon Musk.

>>11785266
>The universe that gave me life and everything I see is mine to consume and wittingly ruin its natural beauty.

Yeah fuck off OP. Stop watching Star Trek and fisting Elon Musk.

>>11786630
BUT MUH NATURAL BEAUTY HURR HURR

>>11785266
Didn't you watch the video? We don't have anywhere near the technicology or the infrastructure required to build a Dyson Swarm.

>>11786653
You have no beauty so you fail to care for things that do have beauty. You dweeb.

>>11786630
we are only another part of the universe, thus everything we do is part of the natural beauty of the universe

>>11785458
That won't be enough material.

You would literally need a spacefaring civilization to go to other planets and harvest the materials there for a Dyson sphere.

>>11787007
the sphere discussed here is a swarm, not a solid sphere

>>11785266
>pop-sci
kys faggot

>>11786266
I meant a prototype of what's on the OP pic. So a small mirror array orbiting the sun, sending energy to earth.

>>11786174
Starhip will supposedly be able to to put 1kg of material into orbit for less than 200$. Do you think it would be possible to contruct a small-scale proof of concept for something like that for a reasonable pricetag (1-5 BN)?

>>11787283
Each falcon 9 currently launches football field size solar panels to space each month, multiple times a month sometimes.

>>11786174
Orbital power using lasers is worthless because it can be blocked by clouds just like solar power. Orbital power plants using microwaves are illegal by ITU and FCC regulations. These badboys put out JIGGAWATTS of microwaves and microwaves spread out. So they would end up interfering with wifi, bluetooth, and other wireless services in a region hundreds of kilometers around the receiver. This is illegal. Current ITU regulations do not make an exception for this. This is the future we chose.

>>11787324
Just point it at the desert where there's no clouds or infrastrucutre and use it to produce green hydrogen on-site.

>>11787343
I don't think you understand just how big the interference region is. We're talking a good portion of the southern US. Good fucking luck making it legal. The microwave band in the region you'd have to transmit is known as the 'beach front property' of the RF spectrum and everyone's already staked their claims.

>>11787366
The Ocean then. We could probably repurpose some old oil rigs. Gotta do some calculation whether that's more efficient than just planting solar panels directly in the desert but even if it weren't it would probably still be worth the investment for the advancements in engineering.

>>11785266
Very cute.

We can't even figure out how to stop global warming, how to colonize Mars, we haven't been to Mercury, we haven't figured out Nuclear Fusion, we can't even seem to be able to agree on a COVID-19 responde, and you believe we could get anywhere close to the engineering knowhow, industrial capacity, and political determination to build a Dyson Swarm, let alone a Dyson Sphere???

To run you first need to know how to walk.

>>11787458
>>11785266
By the way, good luck convincing the average mouthbreathing voter that their gibs need to be cut to fund a massive space engineering project that won't have any results to show for it for generations.

America can't even run a balanced budget as it is.

How could it build? There are not enough materials. This is bigger than the earth

>>11787434
not sure if you knew this, but boats and planes need to keep working over there

>>11785292
Won't build it until there is demand for it. Someday maybe there will be enough load that a Dyson sphere would be worth it, but not for thousands of years

>>11785266
You might be able to do it with a matter wave. One molecule of graphene.

Likely it's already done, some secret weapons program sitting on the shelf.

.

>>11787434
you need to be HUNDREDS of kilometers offshore. Building powerlines hundreds of kilometers off shore isn't cheap.
>>11787593
fuck em'

>>11785266
dyson sphere is a meme

>>11785266
it looks more like a dyson donut really

>>11785266
Why not just suck helium and hydrogen and use it in our own fusion reactors seems pretty inefficient to have to use solar panels and other non sense.

>>11788375
the quintessential tripfag post
+1 to thread limit and no value added

>>11787711
there's always demand for more power

Lmao at all these smug, shortsighted idiots who believe in this meme technology. Inefficient, useless, technology born in decades old thought experiments based on a man's speculation of future technology. The arrogance is comical.

>>11788819
why use our own fusion reactors when there are naturally occuring reactors called stars? also, good luck generating multiple yottawatts with fusion reactors..

>>11788968
yes, better to just live in squalor for a while then die out, that's a lot more farsighted

>>11788819
because the sun is already a huge fusion reactor. Lifting mass from the surface of the sun to infinity takes 2.1*10^11 J/kg. That's a huge amount of energy Fusion of hydrogen itself is incredibly hard. In the sun hydrogen fusion events are incredibly rare, but the sun makes up for this by being HUGE.

>>11788980
Using solar power seems reasonable for any foreseeable future. The sun will be here for some billions of years.

>>11788980
No. You miss the point. Why build inefficient, clunky megastructures, when you could just create more stars. We know nothing. All evidence points to technology evolving inward and becoming smaller, and more efficient. We do not observe megastructures in the observable universe, because they do not exist, as the need for them does not exist.

>>11788991
because building a dyson swarm is a lot easier than building stars, duh

>We know nothing.
you sure have some strong opinions about this stuff for someone who knows nothing

>>11787588
>How could it build? There are not enough materials. This is bigger than the earth

It is a swarm of satellites, not a solid structure. If my math is correct, covering the Sun at 0.2 AU with solar power satellites of mass 1 kg per square meter would require about 1.125 x 10^19 tons. Or around 1/500th of Earth mass.

>>11788991
>We do not observe megastructures in the observable universe, because they do not exist

Because we are alone.

>>11788995
Creating megastructures is a lot easier than fusion? Wrong. The logistics of a mining operation in space alone are 1000x further away than mastering fusion. We don't even know what gravity is. Comedy.

>>11789000
>creating stars is the same as creating fusion
wrong

>>11788999
Another meme. There is no Paradox. We simply lack the technology. Noticing a trend here? There could be an identical civilization to ours on the closest exoplanet proxima b, and we have no way of knowing it, or proving it. We can't even eliminate the possibility of life on the moons of our solar system. Our current technology is laughable. We are not special. The arrogance of humans is the answer to the fermi paradox. We dont have the technology.

>>11785266
God fucking damn I hate Kurzegdjjejd.

Please go back to /v/ or /r9k/ or whatever dopamine driven binge made you consider coming here in the first place.

>>11789004
Oh really? Then explain to all of us the these unknown fundamentals of gravity, because it's the key to it all.

>>11789009
i don't need to explain shit, you're the one who said building entire stars is easier than building an oversized satellite network lmao

>>11789005
>There could be an identical civilization to ours on the closest exoplanet proxima b, and we have no way of knowing it

There would not be an identical civilization next to us. There would be billion year old civilizations spread all over the galaxy and the rest of the observable universe.

It is becoming increasingly clear that we are alone.

>>11789009
>these unknown fundamentals of gravity, because it's the key to it all.

Nature of gravity is a theoretical question that will very likely never have any practical applications. We already know enough about gravity for all practical purposes, in the present and in the far future.

>>11789013
Oversized satellite network? You're being completely disingenuous. You cant even explain the logistics of how it would work or be created. I didnt mean literal stars. I was making a parallel because dyson swarm is based on harnessing the energy of stars, and I'm talking about the process of how stars create energy, fusion. I figured you would easily see the obvious parallel here, but I completely overestimated you.

>>11789020
Behold, the arrogance of man. LOL. This is why physics has achieved nothing new in a generation. You should be ashamed of yourself.

>>11789005
the paradox isn't because of a lack of technology, it's because we're biased to thinking that we exist in an average position in the universe, which we apparently don't

>>11789021
sure i can

build glorified hematite mirrors, the more you have the more power you have to build even more of them

>>11789014
More arrogant speculation, based on no facts. You say there is no civilization there? Prove it. You can't. We dont have the technology.

>>11789032
>prove a negative
and you call others arrogant

>>11789027
It's a lack of technology. We cant directly observe, with our current technology.

You didnt explain anything. How are you constructing those mirrors? How are the logistics being handled? What happens with the earth when you blot out the sun? Please go back to /reddit. This is a high IQ board.

>>11789039
i gotta ask, are you on drugs or something

>>11789041
Ah yes, when the argument breaks down, you have to resort to personal attacks. I'm sorry you have to go back.

>>11789027
>it's because we're biased to thinking that we exist in an average position in the universe, which we apparently don't

Quoted for truth. We went from horse carriages to moon landings over the past *century*. Meanwhile, the universe is *14 billion years* old.

Whatever we are, we are certainly NOT average or typical at this stage of our evolution. We are special. If there are aliens out there, they will either have no intelligence or will be millions of years beyond us in development. There is no middle ground. There is certainly no naive Star Trek like universe of universe full of vaguely Earth-like civilizations at similar level of development.

>>11789042
it's more like personal concern, you're acting erratically

>>11789039
>We cant directly observe, with our current technology.

We can indirectly observe. There is nobody out there, no evidence of any intelligent activity at all. That is despite observing countless galaxies with trillions of stars.

>>11789043
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLbbpRYRW5Y

>>11789043
Based on the area of we've searched, you making this claim, is the equivalent to taking a cup of ocean water, and claiming there's no Dolphins. There would ofc be life in that cup, like there could be life on the moons of our solar system. We don't know if there is, because we'd rather argue on the internet about genders and dicks, then actually discover real truth.

>>11789051
That indirect observation is based on the absence of megastructures, which is completely based on our speculation of technology a type 3 civ would use, as well as thermodynamics and heat signatures. The presence of heat is a sign of inefficiency. We do not have the technology to directly observe.

>>11789059
>We do not have the technology to directly observe.
This is a lazy excuse, not an argument. We can observe well enough to draw some conclusions. Discounting those conclusions because the observations don't match your conveniently lofty standards just shows you're projecting personal bias on the entire issue.

>>11789066
It's a literal fact. We do not have the technology. What bias? What do I gain? The only one with something to gain, would be you. You want to feel special. Our technology, and understanding is primitive.

>>11789066
It is like god of the gaps with that guy but instead it is aliens of the gaps

>>11789080
The fact that we don't have arbitrarily good technology is a fact, but it's a worthless fact because it'll always be the case and you'll never need to fess up to your mistakes. Your bias is to reason reject valid partial data because you don't have perfect full data, which you are doing for personal reasons where you don't really need to have anything to gain, it's just human nature. But since you're saying that I want to feel special even though you have no idea about me, I will posit that you want to feel special by being a contrarian. It's the same sort of bias that creates flat earthers or antivaxers, they feel better when they feel like they're right and the majority is wrong.

>>11789090
Ironic. It's almost as if you dont realize, that's exactly what you're doing. Science is about the pursuit of truth and observation. We literally dont have the technology to observe, yet you're making declarations and presenting them as fact. If anything, there is more proof that life is abundant the universe, and could be all over our own solar system.

>>11789095
I said that you want to feel special, because either you or the other guy in the last 15 minutes, said "We are special"

>>11789098
Nevertheless. I'm not taking it personally, I'm just giving my counteropinion.

>>11789101
I have no issue with that, and welcome it. I only have an issue when it's presented as fact. We can agree to disagree, but I welcome the debate.

>>11785266
We shouldn't build one yet. Why? Because we haven't burned up all the easy fusionable material in the gas planets yet.

>>11789169
but a dyson swarm is cheaper and easier than mining hydrogen from deep gravity wells

>>11785820
We'll never be as efficient at fusion as a star though

>>11789199
that's a bold claim, stars aren't actually that efficient

>>11789204
We don't need to put energy into a star though

>>11787324
Do you really believe clouds are an obstacle for a powerful laser? Cute.

>>11787473
America does not matter. I guess China will certainly do this.

>>11788997
also most of the structure would be reflective foil mirrors, these weight much less

>>11789218
impractical.

>>11785266
Dyson spheres are a gigantic meme.

for now it's better to build solar in deserts

>>11789043
>If there are aliens out there, they will either have no intelligence or will be millions of years beyond us in development.
Given that the universe stretches to infinity, the probability of at least another advanced alien civilization on the same technological stage as ourselves approaches a probability of 1 (100%).

That is not to say that we can interact with them. Perhaps they are so far away that we will never make contact. Perhaps they are closer but FTL travel is an impossibility. Or perhaps we will make contact in the next 200 years.

Fact is, we do not know.

>>11785266
Low IQ meme

>>11789468
>Fact is

>>11789503
>Common idiomatic expressions trigger me
sad 2 b u

>>11789510
Dont waste your time, there's no hope for them. They're subscribed to hive mind thinking. They think they have discovered truth through observation, even though we dont have the technology to directly observe.

>>11789468
>Given that the universe stretches to infinity, the probability of at least another advanced alien civilization on the same technological stage as ourselves approaches a probability of 1 (100%).
wrong, we don't know how far the universe stretches - we only know how large the observable universe is; and we don't know what the odds of a civilization arising are - whatever the size of the universe is, the odds could still be so low that it only happened once, because our current observations only require that it happened once

Who the fuck would have control over this? Whoever buys out this thing gets control over all of humanities power and can charge whatever the fuck they want for it.

This would be a nightmare if it actually came true.

>>11789764
a lot of speculative science always boils down to that, but i don't think it's ever that simple in the end, you could have made the same argument about the internet of today a few decades ago

>>11789764
Sun is big enough that every nation or corporation could have its own array. Through competition, prices would be reasonable.

>>11789694
>Observations, including the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), and Planck maps of the CMB, suggest that the universe is infinite in extent with a finite age, as described by the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker (FLRW) models

>>11790034
those aren't even theories, they're just guesses, there is no solid evidence for what the universe is like beyond the cosmic event horizon

>>11785286
>why tho?
For the last time, science cannot answer why questions only how questions.

>>11790048
>observations are not evidence
Ok

>>11790063
not when they're equally consistent with the claim you're projecting on them as with the opposite case

>>11785266
We have. It sucks.

>>11790072
How are they consistent with the idea of a finite universe?

>>11790034
>suggest

It is not a very reliable evidence of universe being infinite at all. We just see that our observable part of the universe is to a high accuracy flat (no curvature of spacetime was detected). But maybe there is a curvature but too small to measure, so the universe is finite. Or maybe the shape of the universe is not totally isotropic on largest scales and it is only our part that is flat but then there may be curved parts as well and the whole thing is finite. We just don't know.

Any infinities being physical is dubious as well.

>>11790095
easily in several ways, not the least of which is that the universe is just so big that the topology of a 3-sphere isn't apparent from this little slice

>>11790097
The FLRW models seem the most consistent though. Are they definitive? No. But until new evidence can be presented to disprove them it's the best fit.

Going back to the original discussion the fact that we haven't observed a Dyson Sphere is not evidence that there aren't alien civilizations out there. Maybe building a Dyson Sphere is impractical. Maybe there are alien civilizations beyond the observable universe or beyond our technical capacity to observe them.

Too many variables to take into account to make such a blanket statement that Humans are somehow unique in the entire universe. It's a ludicrous statement that reeks of hubris and is not backed by the empirical evidence, which as you said yourself, SUGGESTS the opposite.

Wow, it's as if CME's don't exist. Yay Dyson Sphere.

Solar arrays in orbit which send the energy to the earth with lasers

Is that something feasible?

>>11790133
Yes, but not energetically efficient unless you are already on orbit

Where would you find the material

>>11789204
Red dwarfs are insanely efficient actually, we just need to use that dyson swarm to remove two thirds of the sun's mass and either fashion another pair of red dwarfs out of them or store them for later usage.

>>11790178
making the sun into one is a terrible idea because red dwarves are very turbulent compared to the sun

>>11790185
considering that the Sun will burn and engulf the Earth.. a turbulent red dwarf with trillion year lifetime is still much preferable

>>11790139

You are surrounded by it, and even if we consume the asteroid belt and several moons, well this planet had too much gravity anyway.

>>11790217
Humanity won't be around to see that.

>>11790139
Anywhere. In its most basic form a dyson sphere is just a bunch of extremely thin, reflective light sails that hover over the sun and have some way of adjusting their orientation so you can beam that sunlight wherever you want. It doesn't actually need that much mass.

>>11787324
If we're already building a dyson sphere/swarm in the first place, why not build a space elevator too and beam the laser to the top, then you can transmit the power through the inside of the tether via whatevet means would be most efficient.

>>11787324
You think China gives a shit about ITU or FCC regulations? Lmao.

>>11790133
we already got the tech, we just need to scale it up

>>11790120
This guy gets it

>>11791054
>>11790120
i think it's hubris either way, this is a field we have no actual evidence in so saying anything other than, or at least not prefaced by, "i don't know" means you're sniffing your own farts

>>11791071
The real crime is that the majority our society seems to not even care. Imo there is nothing greater than figuring out these truths, and discovering and expanding. It still feels like were hopelessly primitive.

Quick example: If we were visited by an alien race, would they say they're from Country A on Planet B, or simply say they're from Planet B?

How far are we away from achieving a one planet status like this? It feels 100s of years away for us, to come together as one planet. Ironically, it probably would take an event like alien contact to happen.

>>11791089
>come together as one planet
Could just as well be the other way around tho. Why would it be necessary? Right now we're headed towards commercial space exploration. This could just as well continue and we could explore the stars as individuals.

>>11789764
Sci fi fags presuppose a globalist union where we all sing Kumbaya and shit

>>11789095
except your partial valid data is a literal grain of sand in the desert of the universe

We can barely "deduce" the presence of exoplanets from the velocity vector of a star.

>>11789033
the point is the jury is still out there whether there is or there is not. exoplanets are merely deduced, not directly observed.

At this point in our technology we can "barely" deduce the existence of planets in the goldilocks zone and that is IT. The art you see on a scientific article saying they found a new possibly habitable planet ? That is just it, art. What astrophysicists actually study are the velocity vector of stars to deduce where a planet is from barycenter calculations.

>>11791071
It's not hubris to say that we just can't fucking see a dyson sphere even if it hit us in the face. Fuck, there could be a partial dyson sphere on proxima centauri and we wouldn't fucking know.

>>11791234
>>11791220

Has restored my faith in this board. Imagine the hubris it takes to declare the type of technology or methods a hyper advanced civilization would use, then on top of it, declare a paradox based on the absence of this speculative technology. An absence that's also only being determined indirectly, because were so primitive technologically that we cant even directly observe. It's borderline insanity. If you asked people what they wouldve wanted 150 years ago, it wouldve been a faster horse, yet they have the hubris to make these declarations based on human speculation.

There is much more evidence for life being common in the universe. In our Solar System alone, there are 7+ bodies that have shown serious potential, and some have even had observed organics. We've also learned that life is extremely creative and durable in ways to persist. Just remember, you're the people betting against life.

Dyson swarms and fermi paradox are hivemind memes perpetuated by decades old speculation, based in extreme hubris and ignorance.

>>11791382
Boom

>>11786630
>muh beauty
We are the universe you brainlet, we are part of nature

>>11791211
Our data will always be incomplete. If you think that means we can't know anything, then you're an idiot.

>>11791220
>the fact that we can't disprove it's there means it must be there
What the fuck are you even smoking.

>>11791234
We would, actually. That much is visible to our current tech. Especially if it were so close.

>>11791107
You see that way too rarely in scifi. I could totally see most countries coalescing into a few major federal unions, but one world government? No way.

>>11792483
most sci fi has the world government form after earth gets kicked in the teeth hard enough

>>11785910
>collect energy from the sun's light
>send it to earth using light
why not just put a big magnifying glass in orbit around the sun?

>>11792510
because that would be practically the same thing, except much harder to build?

>>11789054
>we'd rather argue on the internet about genders and dicks, then actually discover real truth.

Profound

>>11790185
>red dwarves are very turbulent compared to the sun
Most but not all, some red dwarfs are quiet

>>11790120
>that we haven't observed a Dyson Sphere is not evidence that there aren't alien civilizations out there. Maybe building a Dyson Sphere is impractical. Maybe there are alien civilizations beyond the observable universe or beyond our technical capacity to observe them.

There are numerous Dyson Sphere candidates

https://home.fnal.gov/~carrigan/infrared_astronomy/Other_searches.htm

>>11785266
Wouldn't constant solar wind and/or photon pressure fuck with orbit really fast?

>>11785266
Sure looks cool ngl

>>11792726
you can make up for that

in fact there are exotic orbits that can make use of things like that called statites, you could for example have a satellite in a lower orbit around the sun moving slower than one in a higher orbit

>>11791143
Kumba Yo! Kumba Yo!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7k80aTOmSA

>>11792430
with current tech a partial dyson sphere would look like an asteroid belt

>>11793214
more like an asteroid sphere

>>11785266
Well it currently isn't even economically viable to build and maintain solar panels on earth for the most part so until we've actually utilised our deserts for this purpose I see no reason to even be thinking about a dyson sphere. Hopefully we find a less crude way of getting our energy if we ever become a space faring civilisation.

>>11790084
but it's great at sucking so it's fine

>>11793256
on the same scales? the only proposal i can think of needs a dyson sphere first to kick start it, and that's a kugelblitz, which is way less realistic

>>11793256
you are not up to date, we are utilizing our deserts, and we already started utilizing space, almost everything in space is solar powered

>>11785910
So would the more difficult limitation of using such a dyson swarm be our ability to transfer the energy, convert it to electricity and store it. Rather than the ability to have a fuckton of solar panels collecting near the sun?
You'd need just as much hardware (or more) near earth orbit to transform/store the energy as you'd need transmitting from the sun, right? Keeping all that shit near an earth size object seems far more difficult, without literally blocking ourselves in like the last point you addressed (on blocking suns light).

I feel like if a society had this fuck ton of material, energy and logistics to build a dyson sphere, they probably have a better solution anyways

>>11793622
no, a dyson sphere is seen as a useful potential technology because it's in itself a stepping stone to better ones

>>11793626
Don't you think that while we research the tech needed to build this colossus, we wouldn't think "Fuck this, let's make a huge-ass version of some better and newer tech".
Making a bigger version isn't always the ideal solution.

>>11793622
Dyson Sphere is purely a vanity object, it could also be Benford Beacon, signalling other future civilizations existence of its creators

>>11793639
we already have the tech to build a lot of satellites anon, if we're trying to move up to some better theoretical generation of power, like say a kugelblitz, then that's why a dyson sphere is a useful stepping stone

this is ignoring the fact that a dyson sphere may be directly useful for reasons other than just power generation, such as creating a solar thruster to move the solar system for example

>>11792430
A well-synchronized Dyson swarm wouldn't cause any dimming in the star's light and thus be undetectable for us.

>>11793669
No, it would definitely dim and affect the spectrum the light, even assuming all the mirrors were working perfectly.

>>11792427
>strawman

I'm not saying that AT all. All i'm saying is you cannot just assume that there is NO life or that there is. The simple fact that life existed on earth more than 3 billion years ago, that earth itself was hindered by several catastrophic events slowed down the advent of intelligent civilization (there were dinosaurs with opposable thumbs far before mammals were more than rat-like animals that could've easily climbed up to be the dominant species of the planet).

Not only can we not disprove the fact, but statistical intuition based on the colossal time frames and the nigh-infinite (the jury's still out on that one) size of the universe seems to corroborate the fact that life outside earth most definitely exists. The contrary is extremely counter intuitive and is only based on the fact that the creation of life is really THAT difficult, but is it really ? experiments in abiogenesis seem to prove the contrary (see Szostak's experiment), given primitive earth conditions nearby geothermal sources.

Educated guess are the main driving force of science, and I believe life outside of earth to be an educated guess. Nothing arrogant in that. What is arrogant is your trollish behavior, and your argument-lacking meme answers.

>>11793691
Not really. If there were several Dyson swarm satellites, evenly spread out in equidistant positions in a stationary orbit around their star, then Earth telescopes would not notice any sudden dimming in the star's luminosity, it would be constant, provided that the number of satellites transiting the point of their orbit between the star and Earth are always the same.

There would a difference in the star's luminosity vs what it should really be given its age, type and mass, but that is not something Earth's telescopes are acrively looking for. The focus is currently placed on exoplanets which analyze the variations in a star's luminosity when an object transits over them.

>>11792430
I was exaggerating but yes, a dyson sphere would be visible.

>>11793669
It would be visible through gravitational perturbation of our sun (or earth)'s velocity. which is the way we detect the presence of exoplanets.

>>11794139
>All i'm saying is you cannot just assume that there is NO life or that there is.
Easy to agree with.

>The simple fact that life existed on earth more than 3 billion years ago, that earth itself was hindered by several catastrophic events slowed down the advent of intelligent civilization (there were dinosaurs with opposable thumbs far before mammals were more than rat-like animals that could've easily climbed up to be the dominant species of the planet).
This is wrong. How immediately life started is not a meaningful data point, it's not statistically meaningful in the vacuum we have it right now. Disasters are likewise not meaningful data points, as for all we know they could actually have increased the odds instead of decreased them.

>statistical intuition
Stop pulling shit out of your ass. You have no statistical basis for making any claims about how likely life or intelligence are to arise out of nothing. And I mean that literally. One single example of civilization arising on earth is equally consistent with a million civilizations in the milky way and a single lonely civilization in the entire universe.

>I believe life outside of earth to be an educated guess.
It is somewhat more likely than the alternative in a "feelings" sense, but we have no idea how likely it is in a cold hard statistical sense. It's perfectly consistent with our observations of the universe, for example, that the odds of life even starting at all on any given world is one in an octillion, and that we are alone because of that.

>>11794147
>a dyson sphere would be visible.
A Dyson Sphere would be visible but a Dyson Swarm in an optimal configuration would be much more trickier to spot.

>>11794147
>It would be visible through gravitational perturbation of our sun (or earth)'s velocity. which is the way we detect the presence of exoplanets.
The perturbations caused by a Dyson Swarm would be negligible as compared to those of a Dyson Sphere, very easy to miss. In an optimal configuration there wouldn't be any sudden "dimming" or perturbation of the star's luminosity, as it happens with a planetary transit.

>>11794190
why would even a single dyson swarm be optimized for someone in exactly our galactic position finding it hard to spot it instead of something more useful like power generation... much less several dyson swarms all doing the same thing in the same direction, i.e. towards us

>>11794193
Well one possible solution of the Fermi Paradox is the notion that the universe is extremely dangerous and thus most alien civilizations go to great lenghts to conceal their presence from others.

They wouldn't be actively hiding from us specifically, but from everybody, by placing their Dyson satellites in an uniform way that doesn't cause perturbations in the star's light intensity.

>>11794202
please don't, there is no fermi paradox, all the fermi "paradox" is is science ficiton fans not being able to cope with what our telescopes say

and there don't need to be perturbations in light intensity, just the unnatural spectroscopically visible cloud of satellites would be highly suspicious

>>11794175
You're retarded. You're retarded, so i'll cut out your work for you and i will not answer to your retarded ass further.

We almost figured abiogenesis out, which really just is a chemical process and as such is a statistical process. We do not need more data points if we know how it works. Just as you don't need more than a single data point to know how a linear system works.

Planets in the goldilocks zone, with similar ages and and water proportions are likely to be plenty. That is an educated guess based on how often we find telluric planets in the goldilocks zone and how basic chemistry (water) works.

That such a planet will harbor life is a likely possibility due to similar geothermal conditions and how long it would take for them to generate life can be also extrapolated from our own studies in abiogenesis.

The only thing i'll give you is that sentient civilizations is slightly harder to figure out. But then again, all you really need is to study the likelihood of life developing opposable thumbs or sufficient brain capacity (which may actually be way more complicated and most likely chaotic). Catastrophic events decrease the pool of living organism capable of evolving towards an actual civilizations so it intuitively decreases the likelihood of developing one fast. Any other conclusion would be completely counter-intuitive unless there is some information we do not know have as of yet.

>>11794143
I think that due to thermodynamics, any Dyson swarm will ultimately alter the spectrum of the star by shifting more of the light towards infrared, waste heat. Whether this is something that can be differentiated from obscuration by dust or asteroids is another question..

>>11794213
>please don't, there is no fermi paradox
It is a useful concept, sorry it triggers you.

>and there don't need to be perturbations in light intensity, just the unnatural spectroscopically visible cloud of satellites would be highly suspicious
Easily confused with dust or debris.

So yeah, I'm not saying there are aliens building Dyson Spheres, I don't even believe in the concept of a Dyson Sphere / Swarm and I think it's a pretty retarded meme... but the question was raised of whether it was technically possible for those to exist without us detecting them, and the fact is, that for the Dyson Swarm at least, it is perfectly possible.

>>11794190
The dyson swarm or sphere shell do not matter. It is the body inside that does. If it's a classical star, and it comes close enough, there is litterally no way for us not to notice a slight gravitational pull, given that it does come close enough. The gravitational pull of the Sun can be felt for almost two light years.

Anything passing through the oort cloud will be felt. Anything passing through the kuiper belt will not only be felt but will fuck us up.

>>11794213
>there is no fermi paradox

https://arxiv.org/search/?query=fermi+paradox&searchtype=all&source=header

109 papers on arxiv with fermi paradox in the abstract, it is a legitimate albeit speculative concept

>>11794235
>You're retarded. You're retarded, so i'll cut out your work for you and i will not answer to your retarded ass further.
I will consider your emotional outburst and decision to preemptively leave the conversation an admission that you don't have any real arguments.

>We almost figured abiogenesis out
Us figuring out how to do something, even if we do accomplish it, says literally nothing about how likely it is to happen spontaneously on its own. This is not a meaningful statistical data point for the issue in question.

>Planets in the goldilocks zone, with similar ages and and water proportions are likely to be plenty.
Doesn't matter. We don't know how likely life is to start on a planet in the goldilocks zone. We have only one example of life starting, for all we know the odds could be so low that it only happened once.

>>11794244
>Easily confused with dust or debris.

Dust or debris that spontaneously generates infrared light that should totally not do so ? hmmmm

>>11794244
>Easily confused with dust or debris.
very suspicious debris, given that it's very different than anything arising naturally

>>11794254
>Dust or debris that spontaneously generates infrared light

Well, isn't that exactly what dust and debris obscuring starlight does? It shifts the light into infrared.

>>11794249

>Us figuring out how to do something, even if we do accomplish it, says literally nothing about how likely it is to happen spontaneously on its own. This is not a meaningful statistical data point for the issue in question.

yes it is. there is a difference between statistical models and statistical extrapolation. And the difference is that you don't need many data points if you know what is techincally happening. If abiogenesis is figured out, the question of how long it takes for life to exist will be simply boiled down to notions such as "how long does it take to create amino acids from scratch + how long it takes to create dna from aminoacids + how long it takes to create nucleus and a cell from dna".

>Doesn't matter. We don't know how likely life is to start on a planet in the goldilocks zone.

Yes we do. If a planet remotely resembles earth in terms of chemical layout, we can be highly confident that the same things will happen. That is how science works. Repeatable.


I have arguments, you're just a retard.

>>11794272

Yes, but not all lights are equal. Say you have a hidden dyson sphere in the kuiper belt, disregarding gravitational data, your dyson sphere would be emanating way more infrared light than it should, because it's not only diffusing what the sun's emanations but also what the dyson star is radiating too. Something would be off.

>>11794285
>you don't need many data points
This is true. To generalize, you need two data points to know how common life should be out there. The first is the number of habitable worlds. We know that this one is pretty high. And the second data point you need is the probability of life spontaneously arising on a habitable world.

Sorry anon, but we don't have this second data point, even in this oversimplified model.

>If abiogenesis is figured out
Abiogenesis in a laboratory isn't a meaningful data point. We aren't talking about how likely it is to happen in a laboratory. We're talking about how likely it is on a completely undisturbed world.

>Yes we do. If a planet remotely resembles earth in terms of chemical layout, we can be highly confident that the same things will happen.
No we don't, and no we can't. We have no idea how likely abiogenesis was to happen on Earth. If it was extremely unlikely, it could have only happened once in the universe. You are arguing from the position that we are in an "average" situation in the universe, because that's what your everyday from your life on earth intuition tells you. But these are not everyday matters. You can't apply common sense to them, because you have no personal experience with them.

>That is how science works. Repeatable.
Repeatability is why you need that second data point anon. Until you find a second example of life that naturally emerged, you have no statistical basis for claiming how likely life is to arise.

>I have arguments, you're just a retard.
Your arguments are poor, and your conduct is defensive as if you have a personal stake in this. Maybe star trek just lied to you anon.

>>11794310
>our dyson sphere would be emanating way more infrared light than it should, because it's not only diffusing what the sun's emanations but also what the dyson star is radiating too. Something would be off.
You keep bringing up examples close to home (Why would there be a Dyson sphere on the Kuiper Belt??) because you know very well that what you are saying doesn't apply to more remote stars that we know very little about. It would be much harder to tell there is something off about, say, HD 117833. A lot of the characteristics of the stars are inferred from their light spectrum rather than the other way around. We would have to be actively looking for Dyson Swarms to be able to spot those kind of irregularities, and we aren't, because the concept is retarded scifi and unlikely. (But technically not impossible)

>>11794351
>You keep bringing up examples close to home (Why would there be a Dyson sphere on the Kuiper Belt??) because you know very well that what you are saying doesn't apply to more remote stars that we know very little about. It would be much harder to tell there is something off about, say, HD 117833. A lot of the characteristics of the stars are inferred from their light spectrum rather than the other way around. We would have to be actively looking for Dyson Swarms to be able to spot those kind of irregularities, and we aren't, because the concept is retarded scifi and unlikely. (But technically not impossible)

Because i'm not the anon that believes that we can detect dyson spheres.

On the contrary. I'm just saying that if it were close enough, we'd actually be capable of detecting them.

also good luck detecting something that would be nothing but a black dot in a black space.

>>11794363
Oh so then I agree with you.

We don't know if this is true and we have no way of knowing, but let's say we accept prior arguments, i.e. Dyson spheres are useful to build and within the grasp of most advanced civilizations.

Searching for Dyson spheres WITHIN our galaxy is still utterly pointless because of simple statistics. If the chance of intelligent life arising is so high it happens twice in a galaxy, the whole universe would be teeming with life. We'd just have to look at a few thousand galaxies and we would expect to see giant holes in them as interstellar civilizations expand and put Dyson spheres around all the stars in their galaxy.

>>11794605
interstellar civilisations are impossible beyond small local multi star systems and clusters, and there are plenty Dyson Sphere candidates in our galaxy

>>11794605
> The search has used the Calgary data collection of the IRAS Low Resolution Spectrometer (LRS) to look for fits to blackbody spectra. Searches have been conducted for both pure (fully cloaked) and partial Dyson Spheres in the blackbody temperature region 100 < T < 600 deg K. Other stellar signatures that resemble a Dyson Sphere are reviewed. When these signatures are used to eliminate sources that mimic Dyson Spheres very few candidates remain and even these are ambiguous. Upper limits are presented for both pure and partial Dyson Spheres. The sensitivity of the LRS was enough to find solar-sized Dyson Spheres out to 300 pc, a reach that encompasses a million solar- type stars.

>>11795542
>>11795548
Nothing is stopping aliens from sending a few mechanized colony building probes to every star in their galaxy. I'm not sure you got my argument. If there's dyson spheres in our galaxy, there are dyson spheres in other galaxies. A fraction of those dyson spheres will send out probes to dysonify the rest of the galaxy, which means huge, easily spotted holes in galaxies. If no such holes exist there are no dyson spheres in our galaxy, probably not even our entire local cluster. I don't give a fuck about your candidates. It's a waste of time and resources to look at them.

>>11796116

Based, this.

If they existed we would know about it by now. Exploring every single star in the galaxy will take less than a million years at relativistic speed. The initial investment is small, too, of one probe.

If someone was out there and wanted us to know about it, we would already.

There are two possibilities. Either we are alone, or aliens exist and have a hidden presence in our system. That's it. Statistically, the idea that aliens exist but are not here is impossibly small.

>>11795542
there is no known technical showstopper for interstellar colonization, it just takes a lot of energy and time, both something Dyson sphere civilization would have plenty of

>>11785286
That's a moral issue bro
go ask a homeless guy

>>11796144
There could be alien civilizations beyond the one billion lightyear boundary if we assume that we're one of the first to have arisen. Unfortunately we'll probably never meet them without FTL.
>tfw you're an astronomer in a billion years living around old terra
>see a distant half-disassembled galaxy, removed from even our farthest colonies billions of years in time and space
>finally proof of alien life, but they're already moving away from us faster than the speed of light because of the expansion of the universe
>send a quiet prayer their way, so that they may survive to the end of heat and time and life

>>11796144
Why do you idiots always assume that aliens will make Dyson spheres? For what reason? Any civilization that master fusion has no need for them.

And no, you don't need colonies either. Earth could easily house 30 billion people. We will never even get to such numbers, Earth population will plateau around 12-15 billion.

Even if we get interstellar travel we won't have colonies with billions of people. Just like population concentrate around cities it will alway concentrate around Earth since it will be easier to live on Earth. If we can make it really comfortable on other planets and people start leaving Earth for them total population of humanity won't grow much.

>>11796767
it's the economy, a dyson sphere means to harvest free fusion energy in the most simple way, foil mirrors in space are just super cheap, you can do it once you got foil and space-flight

>>11789026
Are you just genuinely stupid? We don't need to know what gravity is to know what it does. Like you don't need to understand how a cars engine works to know that it hurts to get hit by a car

>>11796116
>>11796144
There's absolutely zero reason for anyone to colonize the whole Galaxy, and interstellar civilizations are impossible due to lack of FTL and inability to govern over vast distances and time lag.
Exploration and limited colonisation will happen, but culturally and technologically we are past unlimited population growth.

>>11796160
>there is no known technical showstopper for interstellar colonization

https://medium.com/@KevinKohlerFM/cosmic-anarchy-and-its-consequences-b1a557b1a2e3

>This post aims to contribute towards a better understanding of the cosmic political environment. Specifically, it focuses on latency as a key historical constraint to the size and intensity of governments and shows that at lightspeed the distances between stars are too vast to be practical for deferring decision-power to a central body. This result appears to be quite robust to potential upward corrections in the cosmic speed limit or the extension of governance to digital subjects. Subsequently, sovereign political organizations are highly unlikely to ever control more than one star system and a galactic government is outright impossible.

>>11789039
>How are you constructing those mirrors?
With metal from Mercury
>How are the logistics being handled?
From mercury, the lesser gravity allows us to just launch them out of a tube-
>What happens to the earth when you blot out the sun
It won't be blotted out.

>>11793256
>isn't even economically viable to build and maintain solar panels on earth
hello 2009

>>11796923
>>11796917
>muh government

You do not need a centralized government to have galaxy spanning civilization.

>>11796954
Civilization implies Common culture and interaction, go past 50-100 years of time lag and you have different culture and politics. Besides localised bubbles or multi star systems you won't see interstellar civilizations

>>11796917
>but culturally and technologically we are past unlimited population growth.

Low population growth is a very recent development. Who knows if it will last? In the ned breeders always win.

>>11796960
OK then, humanity will fragment into countless civilizations. Some of them will be expansionist. Those will come to dominate in time.

Either way, humanity will spread all over the galaxy.

>>11796966
if we survive the virus

>>11785768
Sphere is correct too. This is what a Dyson sphere really is, not a sphere built all the way around it

>>11786266
Maybe it should count as something that orbits the sun and sends energy away

>Dyson sphere
>Matrioshka brain
>Alcubierre drive
>Wormhole
>Fermi paradox
>Drake equation

>>11796817
It would require entire humanity to unite and concentrate on one thing without any conflict over who gets how much energy. It will never happen. It's a gigantic endeavor without obvious economic gains.

>>11785266
>he fell for the space meme

>>11796962
Population growth is dropping with education and economic wealth. It's like this everywhere.

Now imagine we actually have FTL drives. Somebody invented them overnight. What would this change? Do you really think we will suddenly have millions of people willing to leave Earth and go somewhere they would have to work their asses off just to survive? Without big hospitals. Without fast internet. Without advanced infrastructure of any kind.

>But US frontier

Completely different time and the main reason why people rushed to settle wild west was money. They wanted fertile land and gold.

>But millions of refugees looking for new home

They are looking for new home in EU or USA where they get government money and far more comfortable lives than in their war torn shithole countries. Completely unsettled alien planet has none of that.

Humanity will be concentrated around Solar System even if we get FTL drives. All the way until sun starts killing us in a billion years. Assuming we survive this long.

>>11798633
>meme

>>11798203
every space probe sends away some energy (radio)

>>11798610
actually it would solve this conflict with minimal effort, there will be no shortage of energy

>>11786050
The laws of physics

>>11789014
>It is becoming increasingly clear that we are alone.
NO, it is becoming increasingly clear that it isn't easy or possible to build shit like dysphon spheres regardless of effort

>>11800805
once you go to space you start to but satellites and space station in orbit, if you go on you automatically end up with a dyson sphere

>>11796966
>OK then, humanity will fragment into countless civilizations. Some of them will be expansionist. Those will come to dominate in time.
You can't really be expansionist beyond your solar system, eventually the time lag becomes too much, and you can't really control others.
Also there is little incentive to settle other worlds once you become immortal and everlasting.

>>11785266
imagine the interplanetary nuclear war that's going to be over that thing!

>>11785364
>There's enough power there to do things like warp space.

is this true? when i tried to calculate it i ended up needing like four or five stars if i remember correctly?

>>11800986
>You can't really be expansionist beyond your solar system, eventually the time lag becomes too much
unless everyone in the civ (or just the elites) slow down time synchronously

>>11787324
Just string some extension cables together

>>11800235
Yes, though it's kind of a moot point because the energy and engineering required to create this would still be massive, and we'd also need to move to a new solar system if we were to create a full sphere.

We need intermediate solutions which aren't full spheres, but arrays of orbiting reflector-equipped satellites/robots which we can incrementally add to over time - stopping before too much sunlight is redirected away from the Earth's atmosphere in a way that could cause environmental disruption. A little could get us a lot.

>>11800228
he obviously meant energy useful for work, not just communication

>>11802279
the most simple way to send energy is space mirrors

>>11804086
right, and that's not something we're doing right now

>>11785266
dysphon sphere = sci fi fantasy

>>11788999
No, because they are infeasible to actually build

>>11796926
This is like saying "to build artificial general intelligence just arrange the electrons in a way that it becomes a general intelligence".
It's not a real answer and you're genuinely an idiot for asserting this like it is.

>>11804758
How is building a bunch of thin-foil mirrors and arranging them around the sun infeasible?
>>11804766
There's a genuine difference there. We have no idea how to build AGI. We do know how to build space mirrors and power satellites, we just don't have the industry in space to do it right now.

>>11804754
>it's impossible to make a bunch of satellites

>>11796144
>There are two possibilities.
Again FALSE.
There is another possibility that is what is actually happening:
There is a hard upper bound in terms of engineering and computation that renders it impossible to actually become a space faring civilization regardless of effort.

>>11804783
No, navigation through space is not that simple.

Even if you take a mass the size of the moon and convert it into pure computronium running at the limit of computation and have it compute the motion of N-bodies, it's not going to be able to compute the motion of any amount of bodies greater than like ~10. And in reality we need to compute the motion of hundreds or MORE bodies in order to effectively navigate through spacetime.
And that's assuming there already is a superintelligence the mass of the moon running at the limit of computation.

This shit isn't actually possible. I have no idea why people here ignore the actual answer that makes the most sense and aligns with all understanding of physics and math and computation.

It's NOT ACTUALLY TRACTABLE to become a galaxy wide space faring civilization. It's not that "life is rare!" or "aliens are hiding!" or some other cope. It's that "it's not actually engineering/computationally feasible to ever do regardless of effort. Every alien species is locked into their local star system forever".

A billion years from now humans will be more advanced but not my much. We're about to hit the final wall from which all further advancement creeps along logarithmic ally so slowly that changes over generations are almost nonexistent.

>>11804628
Russia did
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-russian-space-mirror-briefly-lit-night-180957894/

>>11804858
>Even if you take a mass the size of the moon and convert it into pure computronium running at the limit of computation and have it compute the motion of N-bodies, it's not going to be able to compute the motion of any amount of bodies greater than like ~10
Ok retard, I'm done arguing with you. Bad enough that you mix concepts that don't have anything to with each other (you don't need to keep track of things or compute massive amounts of bodies orbiting each other to colonize a star system lol), but this paragraph is so removed from actual reality that I doubt you have done more than skim wikipedia articles and watch popsci TV in your entire life.

I can numerically simulate ten bodies interacting gravitationally on my $200 chinaphone. All the power of a moon mass of computronium in the palm of my hand! Scientists have done 10 BILLION body gravitational simulations of the early universe. Did humanity convert the entire fucking galaxy into computronium while I wasn't looking?

>>11804858
What are you even talking about? We landded a man on the moon and launched probes to interstellar space. Decades ago with literally no computing power.

>>11805335
Simulation and prediction aren't the same thing.
No computer on the planet can solve a 10 body problem you coping lying retard.

>>11805335
>you don't need to keep track of things or compute massive amounts of bodies orbiting each other to colonize a star system lol)
Yes, you do need to do this to travel large distances through space dumbfuck

That kurzgesagt video makes it look easy, but it sure as hell aint happening anywhere near our lifetimes.

>>11793669
Not to mention that civilization capable of building Dyson sphere would likely conceal it as much as possible. We didnt build shit and already have a idea how it might be seen by others. I mean come on, lets give inteligent civilizations some credit here.

>>11805566
nigga all you have to be able to do is pop on over to the nearest star and colonize it, and within a couple million years you've got the whole galaxy covered

>>11805555
explain why simulations aren't enough

Explain why an fpga the size of the moon couldn't figure wouldn't make reliable astrogation charts

>>11785266
>We should build one, seriously.
They're overrated. It's one of those things you use for a week, and then it spends the next 10 years taking up space in your cabinet and forget about.

>>11785910
>t. no understanding of lasers

>Dyson Sphere
>Alcubierre drive
>Tachyons
>maybe String Theory (as a ToE)

what else should I add to the comprehensive list of things "I fucking love science!!!" retards don't understand yet think they're fucking amazing because they watched a kurzgesagt video or TED talk?

>>11785266
> nut

>>11805555
Fuck off mathfag, no one cares if there's no analytic solution in the real world. Literally everything is done numerically.

>>11787711
>thousands of years
guess how I know you're a retard that doesn't comprehend how long that is

every satellite, every space probe, every rocket, every solar panel, every progress in science and technology is a step towards this

>>11785266
The cultural impetus to do so is lacking. You have no reasonable use for that much energy, and the resulting population bloom will not produce a wide diversity of creative output.

“Those who can imagine anything, can create the impossible.”
― Alan Turing

>>11800738
Taste these laws of physics

>>11807788

We are imagining travelling faster than light between the stars for over 100 years now.

People have lived and died of old age waiting for some breakthrough in space technology.

>>11807171
Approximate solutions wont cut it when you're attempting to navigate a ship through a dense asteroid belt where any overlooked rock will completely destroy your ship. You need an EXACT solution to an equation that is not computable in the time-frame required.
The reason we don't see aliens is because you can only travel through small distances of empty space. There is no technology that can ever be built even in principle that will allow for greater distances.

>>11808050
holy shit lmao
/sci/ always has the best posts

>>11808050
>a dense asteroid belt

>>11807893
imagination is not pure fantasy and wishful thinking, if you just wait for someone else to do it your dream may never come true

>>11807196
You don't understand the scale of a Dyson sphere.

>>11785266
Imagine a hacker gaining control over a solar reflector cluster.

>>11808466
no idea, tell me what a hack can do with a few square miles of tinfoil

>>11785266
i think we can figure out fusion reactors before we just build a ball around the one in the sky

>>11787324
Just build a microwave laser, bro.

>>11810395
Maser is older than Laser

>>11809625
you think wrong, we are trying for more then 100 years to build fusion reactors, with no success

harvesting solar power works like a charm and is also much cheaper

>>11810395
ever heard of diffraction limited beam spread? There's no getting around that.

>>11810652
We've already made fusion reactors with Q>1, they're called nukes. If we wanted to we could fill a giant vat with water, explode nukes in it and use the steam to power a turbine.

>>11811358
nukes are fission not fusion also a bomb is not a reactor and not a power plant

>>11811398
>nukes are fission not fusion
What did anon mean by this?

bump

space mega-structures are a worthy goal

>>11813800
It's not a mega structure until it can be clearly seen from the surface of the nearest planet.

If we want to make dyson spheres we need to make self-replicating machines. Self replicating machines could enable us to carry out construction projects on a massive scale at a reasonable cost. One just needs to build one self replicating machine to build them all.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Advanced_Automation_for_Space_Missions
Inb4 biology. Biology's nice, but does not work well in the hard vacuum of space.

>>11814373
Self-replicating machinery is really hard to build though. It needs to be able to find
>find metals, water, carbon and a bunch of other stuff
>extract those resources
>refine those resources
>create compute chips
>create solar panels
>manufacture complicated robotics
>assemble all those things
>rinse and repeat
The smallest self-replicating (non-biological) structures on Earth are nations states composed of thousands of cities and millions of worker drones in the form of humans. Miniaturizing, even into something the size of lets say an aircraft carrier, is an ungodly amount of work.

>>11814410
and that link outlines how you can do some of that.
>>warer, carbon
if you want to eat mercury, then you try to minimize the use of volatile elements
>>extract
>>refine
a great process for doing this is molten oxide electrolysis. Regolith can be melted, electricity can be applied to produce a mixture of metals and silicon. The silicon can be extracted through repeated vacuum distillation. Said silicon can be used to make solar panels.
This outlines how you can use said process to pave solar panels onto the moon: http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/final_report/433Ignatiev.pdf
This also avoids the problem of finding resources, just directly use dirt on the ground.
Alternatively, you don't have to make solar panels and can instead make stirling engines. You could also use a similar process to make shitty 'macrochips.' Most of the robots in said self replicating factory might not need to be that smart, so big fat shitty computers might work. Some processes, like vacuum deposition, become easier when you have access to the hard vacuum of space.
>>assembly
we can simplify the assembly process by making everything out of lego like blocks.
http://www.cba.mit.edu/docs/papers/17.04.11.SelfAssemSpacecraft.pdf
3d printing is also a good option for making parts. Electron beam melting is a particularly well suited process for making parts. Electron beam melting uses an electron beam to melt metal powder together. It works best in a high vacuum. The electron gun and scanning mechanisms are all electronic and thus we can compensate for low manufacturing tolerances with software. It is a large amount of work, but it's not outright impossible.

>>11785266
dyson spheres are a meme