How far away from a dyson sphere are we? 500 years? 5000 years?

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Anonymous Mon Oct 7 13:26:56 2013 No.6074124 [Reply] [Original]

How far away from a dyson sphere are we?

500 years? 5000 years?

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 13:30:54 2013 No.6074133 #1 where should we get the ressources? #2 what makes you think humanity won't destroy itself?

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 13:32:24 2013 No.6074144 >>6074133 >#1 where should we get the ressources? How about Mercury? >#2 what makes you think humanity won't destroy itself? I should have added that that is assuming we won't destroy ourselves beforehand.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 13:34:56 2013 No.6074147 >>6074144 >How about Mercury? Is this a ruse?

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 13:35:54 2013 No.6074153 >>6074147 No, a question. Since it ends with a question mark.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 13:37:24 2013 No.6074158 >>6074153 Think about how small Mercury is. You couldn't possibly use it to make even the smallest Dyson sphere, there isn't enough material there.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 13:37:24 2013 No.6074161 File: 28 KB, 540x387, 012909dreamer-james-dyson-vacuum-02-af.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >How far away from a dyson sphere are we? We've already constructed the Dyson sphere.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 13:39:55 2013 No.6074165 >>6074158 Who said about building a whole dyson sphere? You don't need to enclose the whole sun in it. You build it gradually to generate as much energy as your civilisation needs. Why do you think you need to build ALL of it before it starts working?

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 13:40:25 2013 No.6074171 >>6074165 You did. A dyson sphere is different from a dyson cloud.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 13:44:54 2013 No.6074180 >>6074124 By the time we are advanced enough to build a dyson sphere I doubt we'd need it

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 13:44:54 2013 No.6074182 >>6074171 Fair enough. Then how far away from starting to build a dyson cloud are we?

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 13:47:24 2013 No.6074189

>>6074182
Probably hundreds for a few thousand years away. Our energy needs won't necessitate one for a very long time, and even then we would probably have spread to other solar systems by then and in that case our energy needs would be spread out more then they are now.

Currently covering large, but still relatively small areas compared to the surface area of the planet, parts of deserts around the world with current tech solar panels could power us for a long time, so it would seem more logical we'd do that, but in space and beam the power back down when we need it. Nothing gets done until not doing it is more expensive than doing it.

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 13:50:24 2013 No.6074195

>>6074189

I once read that a dyson sphere would be used by high class civilizations that have created the technology of turning energy into matter. This way it they can harvest energy of the sun with a dyson cloud in order to build interstellar spaceships.

Or Von Neumann Probes?

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 13:56:25 2013 No.6074201
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We probably would already have a fully formed Dyson sphere if it weren't for big oil's interference. See big oil is against Dyson solar power because it's their direct competitor. Once the Dyson sphere is formed they all go out of business. They have been interfering with Dyson sphere research for over 100 years.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 13:57:55 2013 No.6074203 >>6074201 I chuckled.

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 13:58:55 2013 No.6074204

If you can build advanced enough self replicating machines surely they could create the dyson sphere whilst using the energy to create more of themselves and increase the speed of the construction while everybody chills, this can't be but a few hundred years away?

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 14:01:56 2013 No.6074208

Which would be a more efficient use of a Dyson sphere? Or rather which as more energy potential? All the radiation emitted by a star? Or all the potential energy liberated by the deuterium/tritium emitted by a star?

Like would it be better just to collect deuterium/tritium instead of putting put solar cells?

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 14:01:56 2013 No.6074209 >>6074201 >Various criminal words like 'Thief', 'Cheat' and 'Extort' >One of them just says 'Arse'

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 14:04:55 2013 No.6074214 File: 17 KB, 500x202, eads-astrium-solar-panel-laser.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6074182 We could start right now, if we were prepared to pay for it.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 14:06:53 2013 No.6074216 >>6074214 But do we have the technology to send the energy back to earth?

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 14:10:08 2013 No.6074223
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>>6074216
Japan has a plan to do this. They want to use a giant microwave laser to send it back to earth. Works great till the someone pisses off Japan and the world realizes they have a death ray orbiting in space. Or until somebody cuts funding to the project.

Violent Simians Guy Mon Oct 7 14:27:06 2013 No.6074263

>>6074214

Correct. We could start on a Dyson Structure today. There's only one thing in the way: There's no economic model that allows us to do it. It will always be cheaper just to kill people off when resource crunches arrive.

We could do a LOT of things, as long as you ignore economic laws to get them done. By the same realization, they don't get done, since we're not going to ignore economic law.

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 14:36:36 2013 No.6074280
File: 1.01 MB, 1400x788, dyson sphere.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

It's an overkill of an engineering project. The same technological advances and sheer quantities of material for such a task could be better spent on creating a significantly artificially smaller but denser (man-made sustained fusion) star. And instead of using solar collectors, utilizing the magnetic fields produced from the man-made star to generate currents in surrounding coils.

Now the reason why a civilization may actually create a Dyson sphere is to display technological superiority; that they simply "can" do it.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 14:53:12 2013 No.6074319 File: 35 KB, 500x479, tit.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6074124 I doubt acquiring the amount of raw materials required would ever be possible. You'd literally have to strip mine entire planets.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 14:57:42 2013 No.6074332 >>6074319 More like dissassemble Also i'mplyin it's even that difficult, when you can already move freely in the solar system.

Violent Simians Guy Mon Oct 7 14:58:42 2013 No.6074334

>>6074133
Take a solar collector surface as a "ringworld", 1 Earth diameter wide, an average of 1mm thick, and just about 1 Earth orbit in radius from the Sun. Over that distance, the curve can be ignored for computing volume, so we take it straight volume:

width = 1.2756x10^7 m
thick = 10^-3 m
length = 9.40x10^11 m
volume = 1.20x10^16 m^3
sphere of material source = 284 km

The material source (assuming similar density) could be the 8th largest asteroid, 87 Sylvia.

For this investment of a fairly tiny Dyson Ring, we could collect 8.16x10^18 kW, assuming overall 50% collector loss. This amount of power is about 185 million times larger than the 4.4x10^10 kW power consumption of all of Humanity.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 15:06:43 2013 No.6074354 >>6074208 How would you extract material from the sun? It's kind of hot.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 15:10:47 2013 No.6074367 >>6074334 >run all of the energy to a giant laser array >point at moon >carve a giant penis on the lunar surface Some people don't think it be like it is, but it do.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 15:11:46 2013 No.6074370 The Earth is a Dyson Sphere. Discuss.

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 15:13:18 2013 No.6074377

>>6074124
>How far away from a dyson sphere are we?
Feel free to calculate it, annual powerconsumption increases by a few percentage every year, constantly, and a dyson sphere have something like 23 trillion times the energy output the current global combined ENERGY(not just electricity, all energy use) demand.

23 trillion times is approximate number I pull from memory from last time I calculated that value.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 15:14:18 2013 No.6074378 >>6074334 You fail at math. The volumes are radically different, and the one you computed isn't ever right if you were doing the right thing (you aren't).

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 15:20:47 2013 No.6074395 >>6074124 >dyson anything >implying it wouldn't expand to the point of structural failure due to the pressure of the solar wind >tfw you realise a dyson sphere's literally a solar-sail powered space balloon.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 15:23:48 2013 No.6074404 >>6074377 So I did this calculation. At 22% growth per decade it would take ~1500 years. But of course it won't happen because it grows senseless quite quickly. Also, the surface of the earth will be a molten sea of magma long before that is reached.

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 15:26:46 2013 No.6074413

>>6074395
Solar wind is pathetic. Light pressure is far stronger, and even that is pathetic in comparison to the sun's gravity and stresses on the structure from rotation. If you can overcome the rotational stress you're fine. The solar wind would take at least billions of years to accumulate enough particles in the sphere's atmosphere to cause a problem. The bigger problem is radiation: no magnetic field like earth has to protect us.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 15:27:48 2013 No.6074414 Making a Dyson sphere seems extremely likely to be necessary for a long, long time. The amount of energy we would get from it would be ridiculous.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 15:30:17 2013 No.6074421 File: 57 KB, 828x1154, scitrophy.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6074395 >implying something without bothering to look up the numerical values first. Here's your trophy, display it produly.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 15:35:18 2013 No.6074426 >>6074124 Far enough in the future that speculation becomes absurd.

>>	Violent Simians Guy Mon Oct 7 15:36:18 2013 No.6074429 >>6074378 Then show my error. All the numbers are there. I'm waiting.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 15:46:47 2013 No.6074443 >>6074429 You are assuming it is a solid prism for starters. Dumbass.

Violent Simians Guy Mon Oct 7 16:02:24 2013 No.6074464

>>6074443

A "solid prism" is a nonsense term. This is just a Dyson Ring. You have no sensible critique, so the time of your SHUTTING THE FUCK UP has arrived.

Perform the calculations yourself AND FUCKING POST THEM if you know what's wrong. Protip: Nothing's wrong.

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 16:03:24 2013 No.6074466
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I'm actually more interested in when humanity is able to do this.

Ignore the shitty scale (elevator has to be a lot higher than that), but what it is essentially is three space elevators interconnected by massive solar cells, delivering power to the planet.

It seems "doable" mathematically, we just need the right materials.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 16:05:54 2013 No.6074468 >>6074466 carbon nanotubes would be enought or even better than that?

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 16:07:53 2013 No.6074470

>>6074464
You're a troll, but I shall feed you.

You computed the volume as length*width*thick.

This is what a moron who doesn't understand what he is doing does.

If you want to establish that you know fuck-all about what you are doing, trying specifying the formula you are using.

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 16:08:23 2013 No.6074474

>>6074468
I hate when people bring up nanotubes. They're fantastically strong, but they aren't guaranteed to be the answer. There's a lot of testing that has NOT been done on them, because people can't make them long enough. That right there tells you that it might not be an ideal material.

But yes, if what is claimed about them is true, and holds at large lengths, they'll do.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 16:12:23 2013 No.6074480 >>6074466 Why does it need to be higher than that, the distance shown seems like enough for a stable orbit and that alone would be difficult to achieve without going further and ultimately bigger

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 16:12:55 2013 No.6074477 >>6074470 >You computed the volume as lengthwidththick. As much as I think VSG is an obnoxious dick more often than not his way is valid when thickness is very small compared to radius. Feel free to do a calculation to prove him wrong.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 16:13:24 2013 No.6074481 >>6074480 Because then the elevator could not be a cable but would have to be a tower that would have to hold up the ring.

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 16:16:54 2013 No.6074486

>>6074477
It's wrong. Not to mention he never specifies where his numbers even come from.

He is calculating the volume of a box that encompasses earth's orbit (pretending it's a rectangle) with width 10^{-3}, assuming there is any sense at all to the numbers he pulled out of his ass. If you don't see why this is fantastically wrong, then you should just not be on /sci/ and go back to /3rdgrade/.

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 16:18:53 2013 No.6074488

>>6074480
The key with a space elevator is that you need to balance the gravitational and centripetal forces. I could go into the math, but the only positive solution (for any material), is around 144000 km.

The picture I posted is at most 5000km above sea level. It's not even at geostationary

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 16:21:54 2013 No.6074496

>>6074486
No...he's saying the width is the earths diameter, and the length is the length of the earths orbit, or 2*pi*R_earthorbit.

The difference in the radius of the earths orbit and the outer radius of the ring is insignificant down to like 6 decimal places, so you can approximate the outer radius to be the same length, and the equation becomes L*W*t.

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 16:32:54 2013 No.6074524

>>6074486
Jesus christ you're retarded.

The circumference of a circle with r=1AU is 6.28AU, the width of an earth diameter is 12735 km and the hypotethic band of solar panels filling earth orbit have an average thickness of 1mm.

Oh look, the volume is 1.2*10^16m^2, just like he calculated.

Feel free to plug the equivalent numbers into a hollow cylinder with r=1AU wall = 1mm and height 12735km

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 16:34:55 2013 No.6074528 >>6074488 >balance the gravitational and centripetal forces. Gravity IS the centripetal force. Don't be one of those people who is afraid to say "centrifugal."

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 16:35:26 2013 No.6074531 >>6074528 To be honest I don't really know the difference.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 16:38:58 2013 No.6074537 >>6074531 centripetal means "towards the center" centrifugal means "away from the center"

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 16:42:24 2013 No.6074546 >>6074263 >By the same realization, they don't get done, since we're not going to ignore economic law. Makes me feel sad, m8.

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 16:55:26 2013 No.6074573

>>6074524
Keep in mind though that the Earth doesn't follow a perfectly circular orbit. At aphelion the Earth is 1.01 AU from the Sun, about 5 million miles farther out than perihelion (.98 AU)

A dyson sphere would have to have a radius greater than 1.01 AU from the Sun to avoid a catastrophic collision.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 17:02:26 2013 No.6074589 >>6074481 what?! Why not do it the other way around? The orbiting ring holds up the cable in a geostationary orbit, allowing the cable to dangle over one spot on the Earth's surface. (we could tie it down, I guess)

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 17:19:55 2013 No.6074624 >>6074589 You're putting too much stresses on the ring now. The bending moments at the connection points to the cable will be insanely high. Not to mention the deflection on the ring itself. It could easily destabilize the orbit.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 18:51:35 2013 No.6074866 I'm about a 5 years away from saving enough for a dyson vacuum, if that's what you meant.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 18:53:36 2013 No.6074869 About 30 light years from the nearest one.

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 18:53:36 2013 No.6074871
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>>6074624

Orbital rings are perfectly reasonably space mega-structures. They're way to support something that goes all the way up to geostationary so you don;t have to worry about making a cable 36, 000 km long.

Of course, you need plenty of stuff in orbit in the first place to make it and it wouldn't be much good for attaching solar panels to, as it should be little more than a huge strip of iron.

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 20:15:35 2013 No.6075094 [DELETED]

>>6074334
You need MUCH more material than that for a solid band of solar panels - you're forgetting tensile strength. Remember, when Niven designed his Ringworld, he needed to postulate a magical material called "scrith" with tensile strengths on the order of the strong nuclear force to stop the ring from tearing itself apart. So either the ring isn't orbiting - in which case you ALSO need to include the mass of the solar sail needed to keep stable - or it is, and you need to include a very large amount of extra material in order to keep the ring from pulling itself apart from the centrifugal stress.

That said, such projects aren't inherently impossible. A large Dyson-Harrop satellite, with an 8400-km sail and a kilometer of copper wire as a collector ring, could collect a full 10^27 watts of power. Or you could break your ring up as a non-solid Dyson cloud, in which case those mass numbers are more-or-less accurate. Or you could use a solar-inflated Dyson Bubble, built out of solar-sail material, which would at a distance of 1 AU have less mass than Pallas. (Although keep in mind that we currently don't know of a solar-sail material light enough to make a Dyson bubble; Graphene would work very well, but sadly it's completely transparent and we can't make it in large sheets.)

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 20:22:36 2013 No.6075115 Human civilization is regressing. How do you expect us to achieve such advanced tech when we are going back to the stone age or an idiocracy type society?

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 21:15:55 2013 No.6075234

>>6074334
The laws of economics prevent us from building such a structure, it's true. But they only prevent us from building it in the same way that the laws of economics prevented Thomas Jefferson from throwing the Transcontinental Railroad across North America, or prevented Theodore Roosevelt from building a national highway system, or stopped the inhabitants of California from building vast water projects to effectively terraform their state in 1900, or prevented IBM from starting the e-commerce revolution in the 1960s: The infrastructure does not exist to do so, and the technology isn't ready yet either. That doesn't mean that the Transcontinental Railroad was impossible, or the highways, or the modern Internet were fundamentally impossible - and indeed, the idea of utilizing space in this manner isn't much crazier or more difficult than the Transcontinental Railroad was. But the technology isn't ready - we don't have the manufacturing capacity to fabricate such a thing, the space technology to fly it up, assemble, or maintain it (at a reasonable price), or the infrastructure to beam it back and harness it. That doesn't mean that it's inherently infeasible - steam locomotives were first set rolling in 1800, and all the principles of metallurgy and excavation involved were known at the time, but it took 60 years before construction started on the Transcontinental Railroad project. All (well, most) of the basic principles we'd need to build a power megasatellite are known, and there are already (shitty, expensive, inefficient) rockets flying - and indeed, the only reason it's taken so abnormally long for space to be harnessed isn't that space is inherently impractical, but that management techniques and fundamental assumptions and attitudes towards How To Do Space have MADE it impractical. For now. Things are changing.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 21:19:28 2013 No.6075242 >>6074124 That picture just made me realize. If any solar system ever constructed a dyson sphere then their sun wouldn't be visible from far away. Think of the rammifications!

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 21:23:29 2013 No.6075250 >>6075242 No, their sun's emission spectra would just be shifted to the infrareds giving off a distinct signature. Several stellar objects have been found that meet this signature, but they are likely to be natural

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 21:23:59 2013 No.6075248 >>6075115 A cull or escape from earth by a select few.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 21:24:00 2013 No.6075251 >>6075250 okay.jpg

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 21:24:28 2013 No.6075253

>>6075242
Other people already have thought of the ramifications, and indeed there have already been several thorough surveys of stars to look for Dyson spheres.

We didn't find any, so we're pretty sure nobody within a thousand light-years or so has built a Dyson sphere.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 21:29:29 2013 No.6075259 >>6075253 Space is a big place, man

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 21:33:29 2013 No.6075266 >>6075259 Yeah, but Dyson Spheres are really hard to hide and they'd very much stand out.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 21:42:33 2013 No.6075281 >>6074223 that's why you don't mess with scientists.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 21:49:00 2013 No.6075300 >>6075281 don't you mean engineers? You now have one strike against you, three more strikes and you win 3 FREE gigawatts of power to be delivered to your house via laser!

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 21:50:57 2013 No.6075304 Give about two or three weeks, four weeks tops.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 21:54:28 2013 No.6075311 >>6075300 Lasers are an awful method of transmitting power through the atmosphere. It'd probably be via beamed microwaves for the orbit -> ground relay, and so you'd be talking beam diameters n the order of kilometers.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 21:56:58 2013 No.6075316 >>6075311 tepkok

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 22:05:29 2013 No.6075334 >>6075266 But looking at every star within a thousand light years is totally not something that we have done.

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 22:34:23 2013 No.6075375
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>>6075311
Indeed they are, however, microwaves are too big for beaming power to things like space planes where the spot size is required to be on the order of meters.

Thus, a laser is required and thermal power requirements for a space plane are on the order of around 3 GW.

In order to get around atmospheric distortion, one uses adaptive optics, which are already advanced enough to be used by telescopes to see stars without turbulence induced twinkling.

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 22:36:23 2013 No.6075382

>>6075311
Hm...

Graphene has extremely high electrical conductivity (as little as 10^-6 ohm-cm), and its mechanical properties are good enough that it may actually be able to support a space elevator. Would it be feasible to use a graphene-ribbon cable to physically PLUG a solar-power relay in geostationary orbit into an equatorial ground station, essentially creating the world's longest extension cable?

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 22:39:54 2013 No.6075392

>>6075382
Basically, no. The cable would wobble, which means you have a conductor in a changing magnetic field, which means electricity. Lots of electricity. It'd light up bright enough to be seen in the midday sun and break apart. It'd be a cool way of sapping energy out of Earth's magnetic field, otherwise.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 22:41:22 2013 No.6075398 >>6075392 Shame. Does that mean that graphene can't be used for space elevator cables at all, unless it can be made non-conductive somehow?

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 22:46:55 2013 No.6075415 >>6075398 That'll happen to pretty much anything, really. So, you know, stop wishing you had a 10-mile boner. Or, if you continue, at least make sure to never lay on your back.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 22:53:52 2013 No.6075432 >>6074466 That image appears to show a radius much larger than needed. Compare to ISS altitude at that scale.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 22:56:22 2013 No.6075439 >>6075392 >>The cable would wobble, which means you have a conductor in a changing magnetic field, which means electricity. Wouldn't that mean that the wobbling would get damped out?

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 22:57:24 2013 No.6075441 >>6075432 Space elevators have to be built higher than geostationary orbit in order to balance out gravity with centrifugal forces.

Anonymous Mon Oct 7 23:00:24 2013 No.6075447

>>6074474
We can't make nanotubes long enough yet, but nanotubes are just rolled-up graphene and there HAS been successful production of 100-m lengths of graphene using a roll-to-roll CVD technique. And I saw another paper made a few months after that that showed how CVD graphene could be made 90% as strong as pure monolayer graphene made with the exfoliation technique with a few tweaks to the CVD process (apparently the weakening in previous processes had all come from the process used to get the graphene off of the copper they grew it on).

So I find it entirely believable that we will soon be at the point where we can manufacture near-perfect graphene in appropriately large lengths.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 7 23:07:53 2013 No.6075459 >>6075398 Ignore him, he's a dumbass. This isn't a major concern.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 10:08:53 2013 No.6076540 >>6075459 this is relevant to my interests

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 10:16:53 2013 No.6076552 >>6074124 At some point, an advanced civilization probably gets the ability to turn matter into energy, so a dyson sphere becomes unnecessary.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 10:42:58 2013 No.6076569 >>6075253 Why are they so easy to spot? The gravity well?

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 11:14:56 2013 No.6076602 >>6074573 ...no Do you think there is something special about the Earth orbit or sumthin?

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 11:26:26 2013 No.6076626 >>6076552 LOL!

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 11:29:56 2013 No.6076630 > muh dyson sphere By the time we can build it, we may have discovered exotic forms of energy and made use of it.

Anonymous Tue Oct 8 12:00:56 2013 No.6076681

>>6074124
infinite. A Dyson sphere is a stupid use of resources. An advanced enough civilization would focus on spreading out to other stars, not mega-engineering around a dying one.

Hypothetically, if the God-Emporor of mankind got all of humanity to start building a Dyson sphere right now, it would still take millions of years to complete. Do the math, extrapolating from bulk engineering projects we have already done, like canals and dams.

>>	vegnagon !!xFwZpKERbGn Tue Oct 8 12:26:26 2013 No.6076705 >>6074466 >orbital mechanics

Anonymous Tue Oct 8 12:31:26 2013 No.6076708

>>6075441
You seem to be confused about orbital mechanics.
>balance out gravity with centrifugal forces
It's what any closed orbit does.
The reason to put a space elevator slightly higher is to compensate the additional pull from the elevator cable and elevator itself.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 12:58:26 2013 No.6076745 >>6075115 >being this retarded

Violent Simians Guy Tue Oct 8 13:13:27 2013 No.6076768

>>6075253

This is indeed the case. Given our ability to rigorously analyze emissions from nearby stars, Dyson Structures just can't hide. And yet, none have been found.

And it's not for want of trying. Take the Kepler probe, for instance: "Kepler's sole instrument is a photometer that continually monitors the brightness of over 145,000 main sequence stars in a fixed field of view." (Ref: The wiki.) That's how we've been finding lots of extrasolar planets, so you'd think that Dyson Structures would show up in the data. To date, there's been no word on those, just the discoveries of planets.

My conclusion is that "we've looked enough". Dyson Structures are just too rare to find. This means extra-planetary civilizations are correspondingly rare. The latter parts of the Drake Equation must be tiny, or there's another component that we're not willing to admit: That a technological society can simply remain planet-bound.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 13:16:57 2013 No.6076772 >>6076768 Or, in fact, zero. Also, how's that hunt for the Oort Cloud going?

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 13:17:26 2013 No.6076777 >>6074189 Your faith in mankind is overwhelming.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 13:18:26 2013 No.6076779 >>6076745 >being this out of touch

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 13:19:56 2013 No.6076784 >>6074189 >current tech solar panels could power us for a long time, so it would seem more logical we'd do that, but in space and beam the power back down when we need it we would start with mirrors in space I think

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 13:23:58 2013 No.6076798 >>6075311 >Lasers are an awful method of transmitting power through the atmosphere. so we'll just beam the power to the moon base and run an extension cord through the space elevator from the moon to the earth

Anonymous Tue Oct 8 16:30:42 2013 No.6077232

>>6076768
VSG: There's actually a very interesting structure called a Dyson-Harrop Satellite, which would be much more practical and cheap/easy to build than a Dyson sphere, bubble, or cloud, but which delivers comparable power output (a satellite with a 1-km primary wire loop and an 8400-km sail could potentially deliver 100 billion times the power needs of our current civilization) - and yet would be basically undetectable to current methods of searching.

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/abscicon2010/pdf/5469.pdf

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 16:46:45 2013 No.6077279 >>6077232 >100 billion times the power needs of our current civilization I'm unsure about number, I tried to get it verified in the past but I ended up empty handed. But there's power to be had nevertheless and the contruction is likely easier.

Anonymous Tue Oct 8 17:07:10 2013 No.6077334

>>6074182
we will never built one if most of our efforts in concerns of space things are cut down only because some goverment is made up of assholes, and if we up with a dyson sphere it will probably will be built, and destroy our whole civilisation, because it will destroy all energy producers on earth with it cheap energy, and afterwards will be used to suck out the last bit of money from the population, destroyng the 99,9% of civilisation on earth putting thos 99,9% back to stone age, the last 0,01% will use that energy to built spaceships and conquer even more of the universe

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 17:11:09 2013 No.6077344 >>6074195 I think we have the technology already to create matter.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 17:15:09 2013 No.6077362 >>6074354 you could built a dyson sphere and then build a big magnetic/electric field generator in place which is powered by the sphere to extract and cool material from the sun

Anonymous Tue Oct 8 17:17:09 2013 No.6077367
File: 72 KB, 565x423, thestreet.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>6074124
>How far away from a dyson sphere are we?
>500 years? 5000 years?

Never. Those who think it will happen don't understand that we don't have enough energy to do it.

In fact, colonization of Mercury or Mars will also never happen because we won't have enough energy to do it.

No matter how much science fiction dudes mask these fantasies with scientific theories, they will NEVER happen.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 17:19:09 2013 No.6077374 >>6077367 Could you explain why we don't have the energy to colonize Mars?

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 17:21:38 2013 No.6077377 >>6074468 there is better things than carbon nanotubes by now

Anonymous Tue Oct 8 18:47:37 2013 No.6077598

>>6077374
this prof can explain it a lot better than me.

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/

and

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/

it's a fascinating and a depressing read ;_;. But the guy's 100% right.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 19:09:06 2013 No.6077639 >>6076602 ...yes. My point was that if you build a dyson sphere at 1AU the Earth will crash into it. When calculating the volume of a dyson sphere in our solar system, the eccentricity of our orbit should be kept in consideration.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 19:16:06 2013 No.6077654 >>6077367 >colonization of Mercury hahahahahahaha

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 21:00:12 2013 No.6077975 >>6077654 you obviously don't have a clue. Mercury is more 'colonizable' than Mars.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 21:58:00 2013 No.6078123 >>6077975 Damn. I'd never even considered colonization of Mercury, dismissing it as obviously silly, but after doing some research it does seem to be a decent candidate.

Anonymous Tue Oct 8 22:17:33 2013 No.6078156

>>6074280
Not saying that it's not a huge undertaking, but I am not sure that creating fusion devices, then fueling them will give anywhere near the net energy output of a dyson sphere around an existing star that we don't have to fuel. Plus, we should be able to do the same generation with magnetic fields around an existing star as well.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 23:28:06 2013 No.6078284 File: 23 KB, 650x480, star-trek-dyson.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] We're very close and it will look just like this.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 23:30:06 2013 No.6078286 >>6074124 Answer this, Op. Why build a dyson sphere when you can just provide birth control? Until you can answer that, there will be no dyson sphere.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 23:44:35 2013 No.6078309 >>6078286 Answer me this, faggot. Why get out of your bed when you can just keep sleeping? Until you can answer that, your stupid question keeps on being stupid.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 23:45:36 2013 No.6078310 >>6077598 I dunno man, THEY SAID WE WOULD NEVER TRAVEL TO THE MOON THEY SAID WE WOULD NEVER GO FASTER THAN A HORSE etc etc

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 23:49:36 2013 No.6078320 >>6078284 i love you

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 23:57:06 2013 No.6078329 >>6077639 You're really fuckin' reaching now man. He merely provided an example of the scale of such a project, not a basic plan of how to build a Dyson Ring.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 8 23:59:07 2013 No.6078332 >>6078309 Don't get all pissy. There is no need to take apart a star to build a dyson sphere for a population of several trillion. We're not going to be a civilization of space Mormons. Use a fucking condom you slob.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 00:27:01 2013 No.6078368 >>6078310 This. Real scientists don't say that something can never happen, the figure out how it could "theoretically" happen and let it go from there.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 00:28:01 2013 No.6078369 This is why sci fi threads should be banned from /sci/.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 00:33:01 2013 No.6078375 >>6074124 It's about 20 years away. Just like fusion power.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 00:37:31 2013 No.6078382 what the fuck is a dyson sphere

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 00:49:35 2013 No.6078400 >>6078382 it's /sci/fi's wetdream.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 00:56:04 2013 No.6078410 >>6077598 One word. Malthus. And Malthus was plain out wrong. Same story.

Talimar Wed Oct 9 01:09:34 2013 No.6078421

We really should start with the crazy at moving the sun first. As people state, raw materials is limited ergo we need a way to get raw materials. Use uhm... Jupiter as a fuel source..

Frankly Dyson spheres are a waste of resources. As the sun grows into a red giant, how fast can we expand the dyson sphere?

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 01:26:24 2013 No.6078431

Regardless of apparent limitations, if we can pull it off (a complete sphere) after 10,000 years when our sun is dying, could we then return harvested energy into the sun to evoke a black hole, thereby evolving our dyson sphere into something much more wicked? Is there even enough available mass / energy in our solar system to collapse our star indefinitely?

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 01:27:25 2013 No.6078432 >>6078382 Building a sphere around a sun. 1. harness the power of the sun 100% 2. live inside the sphere, on the interior wall

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 01:31:54 2013 No.6078439 >>6078382 wtf is google >>6078432 also damn, i didn't know we intended to live inside.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 01:43:40 2013 No.6078452 >>6078432 So a copy of the niven ring?

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 01:47:10 2013 No.6078463 >>6078432 What keeps us from being yanked off the interior surface by the sun's gravity?

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 01:51:10 2013 No.6078475

>>6078421
>>As the sun grows into a red giant, how fast can we expand the dyson sphere?
Well if we have a dyson sphere we can do star lifting and take apart the sun, so that we could more efficiently use its mass.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting

Or extend its lifespan

a Wed Oct 9 02:01:10 2013 No.6078495

>>6078463
The Sun's gravity is tiny at that distance. Of course, the Dyson shell would have no appreciable gravity either, so it's still dumb as a habitable surface. The only way to make a Dyson Sphere work as a habitat is to either spin it for centrifugal gravity, at which point the stresses involved vastly exceed all possible material tolerances, or to invent artificial gravity (science-fiction only).

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 02:09:10 2013 No.6078508 >>6078463 it's a big sphere, so it's pretty much made out of infinite arches arches are very strong

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 11:12:14 2013 No.6079203 File: 60 KB, 495x417, 1349975241758.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6077598 >http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/ Did I really waste 10 minutes of my life on an article that turned out to be "muh peak oil"?

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 11:15:15 2013 No.6079210 >>6077598 >http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/ This article is terrible and I'm slighlty mad.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 11:34:14 2013 No.6079249

>>6074334
The slightest impact would destroy it. If fact, even without impact it would be torn apart by gravity or even thermal fluctuations (uneven heating from a coronal ejection, for instance). Something 1 mm thick with the diameter of a planetary orbit is going to be very, very unstable - the slightest perturbation would lead to catastrophic failure.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 11:46:16 2013 No.6079264

>>6079249
>the slightest perturbation would lead to catastrophic failure.
Do you realize that it would be in a normal heliocentric orbit? As in, it could be made of independent panels that are not even joined together with micro-ion thrusters to adjust for minor pertubances.

Violent Simians Guy Wed Oct 9 11:48:45 2013 No.6079267

>>6079249

I disagree. Being so thin the slightest impact would penetrate it. That would happen millions of times a year across the area of it. And the impacts wouldn't be "slight"; they'd tend to happen at interplanetary velocity (20km/s), which would tear through in a nanosecond.

There are other engineering problems to worry about with such a structure, which is very much like keeping a ring of tissue paper in place around the Sun.

>>	Violent Simians Guy Wed Oct 9 11:51:44 2013 No.6079272 >>6078286 I agree, actually. And the most effective forms of birth control are starvation and war.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 12:04:46 2013 No.6079291 >>6077598 >http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/ >Such good article >Such good journalist >Bravo, this journalist is top journalist >More spin than quark >Such clever

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 13:40:06 2013 No.6079528

>>6078310
>THEY SAID WE WOULD NEVER TRAVEL TO THE MOON
>THEY SAID WE WOULD NEVER GO FASTER THAN A HORSE
>etc etc

Talk about fallacious argument… you couldn’t construct a rational one if your life depended on it.

>>6078410
>And Malthus was plain out wrong. Same story.

Huh? What does Malthus have to do with space? You're just as dim as the guy above.

>>6079203
>Did I really waste 10 minutes of my life on an article that turned out to be "muh peak oil"?
Obviously you haven't read it because there's no peak oil in there. It has nothing to do with peak oil. Just another illiterate dimwit.

>>6079210
>This article is terrible and I'm slightly mad.
Uh oh, some anon fаg is mad because he can't grasp the point of it and can't even articulate what he's mad about.

>>6079291
He's a tenured professor of physics… something you will never be.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 16:24:27 2013 No.6079896 >>6078400 But why? A dyson sphere is really useless. A gigantic monument to absolutely nothing. Is it literally the largest useful object imaginable? Is that really what all of the hype is about?

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 16:25:57 2013 No.6079899 >>6078431 >after 10,000 years when our sun is dying, wut. The sun has billions of years left.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 17:31:02 2013 No.6080013 >>6079272 Um, what point were you making about my point and dyson spheres? are you just an edgy teenager?

Violent Simians Guy Wed Oct 9 17:49:37 2013 No.6080045

>>6079896

A Dyson Structure isn't useless when you have at least 10^12 Humans to feed. Energy inputs from the Structure's solar collectors could 'easily' cause Humanity to reach 10^15 units in size. 10^18 units is a possibility... a billion times larger than Humanity is today.

Humanity Squared. Just think of it... assuming you CAN think, which seems doubtful.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 18:04:36 2013 No.6080081 >>6074280 >dyson sphere.jpg >is a giant sphere with a fucking planet on the inside surface >and inside that a fucking sun w-what

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 18:10:37 2013 No.6080100 >>6080081 you don't need the planet.. A dyson sphere is a hypothetical machine that can absorb power using 100% of the surface area of the sun instead of just the tiny percentage that hits our planet.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 18:16:36 2013 No.6080119 >>6080045 So I was right. "Space Mormons". I don't really see the point other than making women into clown cars. Have you asked woman what they think about pushing out and raising 20 kids each or do you think they will gladly accept your nerd sperm?

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 18:17:37 2013 No.6080124 >>6080081 Yeah, it's insane isn't it?

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 18:25:06 2013 No.6080148

>>6080119
If we can do a dyson sphere, i think we would have people factories with artificial wombs and/or cloning facilities.

Of course, why would you want meat people when you can make synthetic people who can work on the structure without dedicated infrastructure.

And that's why speculating about one particular future science magic break down quickly, there's others future science magics to consider.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 18:32:36 2013 No.6080159 File: 171 KB, 300x328, 1312138133318.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6080045 >>6080119 >implying we wouldn't focus more on quality than quantity Say 10^10 to 10^14 individual entities. Or just use all that power for research projects.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 18:43:37 2013 No.6080179
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>>6080148
>Of course, why would you want meat people when you can make synthetic people who can work on the structure without dedicated infrastructure.
>>6080148

Okay, you idiots haven't stated the purpose of needlessly expanding the human population into the trillions.

>why do we need a dyson sphere?
>To house 40 trillion people!
>why do we need 40 trillion people?
>To build a dyson sphere!

Are you guys just lonely? Do you think if there's trillions of people, the chance will increase that you'll have at least ONE friend?

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 18:47:06 2013 No.6080184 >>6080179 I Don't Need Friends For I Am Enlightened By My Intelligence.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 18:48:38 2013 No.6080186 File: 89 KB, 437x550, Jean_Bodin.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6080179 The only wealth is man. Except for you shitlord.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 18:52:37 2013 No.6080190 >>6080186 Don't call me a shitlord, fucking aspie space Mormon.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 19:28:35 2013 No.6080248

>>6076630
this
people in the 60s thought there would be tiny atomic reactors in everything from your wristwatch to your television to your cars

linear extrapolation of current data is almost never the case in futurism

>1000 years from now, our methods of energy will be exactly the same as current technology, except on a 1000000000x scale
nah

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 19:39:20 2013 No.6080270
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>>6080248
But, why does the energy have to be so "futuristic"?

That's also a bias. Exotic forms of energy? Why not solar fields with better solar panels and devices that are super energy efficient?

We should aim to use less energy, so it's easier to produce it. Efficiency needs to be the future, not weird ass, difficult, and dangerous forms of energy.

I mean, fuck. Nuclear energy is essentially 20th century technology with a 19th century technology crutch (fucking steam turbine). We really haven't found a better conductor of heat yet, and a way to harness it? Really? Fucking steam?

>come the fuck on science.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 19:47:57 2013 No.6080291 >>6080270 Watsa matta big boy, too cool to use water ?

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 19:50:58 2013 No.6080296

>>6080270
efficiency needs to be the future. dirigible airships are currently the most efficient method of cargo and passenger transport, aeroplanes are too dangerous, weird-ass, and difficult, the public will never ride. for the next 500 years surely zeppelins will be the preferred transport

>your post ca. 1900

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 19:56:56 2013 No.6080314

>>6080291
Water is an amazing substance. But they've also used many other solutions and materials that are FAR more efficient. A closed system with certain gasses comes to mind. CO2 is one for example.

>>6080296
You're an asshole. Bigger isn't better. We can be more advanced and use less energy at the same time. Yep, it's not only possible, it's fucking smart too.

But here I am, talking about efficiency in a fucking dyson sphere thread.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 20:13:26 2013 No.6080338 >>6078310 >EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE sure, whatever makes you sleep better

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 20:18:26 2013 No.6080354 >>6080314 wow sounds like you're the asshole here your post didn't even make sense you just switched sides from arguing against me to arguing with me but still calling me an asshole for poking fun at your post

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 20:19:56 2013 No.6080356

>>6080314
>talking about efficiency in a fucking dyson sphere thread
What's not efficient?
>capturing a significant fraction of the total output of a star

Not as efficient as using the same hydrogen in fusion reactors perhaps, but it's still pretty good.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 20:23:56 2013 No.6080364 >>6074189 hours old post but >and even then we would probably have spread to other solar systems by then and in that case our energy needs would be spread out haha what

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 20:27:16 2013 No.6080374 >>6080364 and by hours I guess I mean days shit /sci/ moves slow

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 20:34:18 2013 No.6080384

>>6080356
Building a huge structure to build a huge structure isn't efficient.

The part of a dyson sphere that people can't explain is why you would need one. Creating a dyson sphere to needlessly expand the human population is a stupid reason to build one.

Once again, this isn't an inevitability because we invented condoms and birth control pills and abortion.

Energy is work. In stead of making more energy and expanding, why not stabilize energy consumption (population) then increase energy efficiency and increased energy production from simple means like solar.

A fucking dyson sphere sounds like a complete fucking waste against that.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 20:40:15 2013 No.6080395 >>6080384 There is a peculiar and noxious train of thought (most common among certain sci-fi fans) that humanity has some kind of duty to spread as far and as thick as possible into the universe.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 20:41:46 2013 No.6080399

>>6080384
>for moar humons
Try to let go of your prejudices. It's annoying to have to tell you over and over again that for a real dyson sphere, "moar humans" is not the fucking point.

The point of a dyson sphere or any star-enclosing structure, is the same as for a nuclear reactor, ie. "MOAR POWR".

A hundred years ago people couldn't fathom a use for a source as powerful as a nuclear plant, but we still had to build them later.

Most people can't think of why we would need to tap into the whole power production of a stellar body, but if the need arises, the fucking thing will be built.

And if it is, the only people living in it will be the people making it, maintaining it and making use of it.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 20:44:46 2013 No.6080402 >>6080395 Space Mormons. With the way they breed, it might be how things end up. Further, don't they believe they "deserve" their own planet? It might be the actual future outcome of the human race at this point.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 20:46:46 2013 No.6080405 >>6080399 >but if the need arises, the fucking thing will be built. Okeedokee. Lets build a dyson sphere, for power we will need after we build a dyson sphere. This circular logic is still smells like bullshit to me.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 20:52:46 2013 No.6080412

>>6080384
> Energy is work. In stead of making more energy and expanding, why not stabilize energy consumption (population) then increase energy efficiency and increased energy production from simple means like solar.
For the same reason programmers are completely shit today as opposed to a couple decades ago.
Energy is cheap $100/MWh for coal.
AC takes ~1 MWh per year. so ~$100/yr
And that's one of the worst appliances that you use.
Saving 1% or a $1/yr isn't useful, yet.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 20:53:45 2013 No.6080415

>>6080402
We MIGHT be able to develop other planets in our own star system, maybe even set up some kind of extremely rudimentary interplanetary economy, but barring FTL any expansion beyond Sol is almost certainly never going to happen, and if it does, it will be completely one-way and at a truly staggering cost in time, lives and resources.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 20:55:47 2013 No.6080419 >>6080405 You really are a dense motherfucker, aren't you? Or maybe you are lousy at understanding english.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 20:56:16 2013 No.6080423

>>6080399
Wouldn't a dyson sphere be a giant prison?

Imagine you have a society of trillions who are capable of building it, they would also have the ability to do much more- like leave the sphere. But if everyone leaves, the usefulness of the sphere would diminish. I could see it becoming a gigantic Best Korea. No one allowed to leave, a massive propaganda unit to maintain and control the population. It will turn into a complete dystopian hell, a trap for humanity.

Imagine all of that energy- just what will it be used for? A way we use our excess energy today is to have a nonsensical "consumer culture". It won't be used for science, computation and discovery- it'll be for every human to have a mansion with the square footage of earth, filled with "things" and shit to the ceiling like you'd see on "Hoarders™". Consume, consume, consume. There will be time for nothing else.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 20:57:17 2013 No.6080428 >>6080405 You seem to be under the assumption that nuclear power plants were built just for shits and giggles, and then people miraculously started using all the power they provided.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 20:59:16 2013 No.6080431 >>6080423 If we're at the point where we are united and broad-thinking enough to enable the creation of a needlessly large fantasy powerball then why would we need to trick ourselves into staying in it?

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 21:02:16 2013 No.6080435

>>6080423
Yes, because that's all that we use power for.
You're right, nothing interesting or useful was ever done with energy.

If we ever build a dyson sphere, it will mostly not be made with human hands. Even just keeping such a fantastically complex thing from tearing itself apart from simplest mistakes will require automated systems or AI on a scale only ever fantasized about.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 21:07:15 2013 No.6080449

I don't think it's a good idea. It's constant power, rather than power reponsive to demand, and you're broadcasting your location to the universe.

A much better idea is to use giant magnets to siphon material out of the star, and then burn it in fusion reactors.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 21:07:47 2013 No.6080445

>>6080428
And the power is mostly wasted. Nuclear plants can't "stop" working. They must produce energy regardless of the need- even in the event of a mass outage due to the destruction of a storm.

Just because we have TVs that give off massive heat, use shitty and hot incandescent bulbs, and leave all of our devices on "standby". People use this energy, not for a need but because we have a system of consumption built around the excess. They provide energy and you waste your time and money paying for it at a premium.

Meanwhile, I don't do any of that shit because I have an extremely efficient house, I hate buying shit and nicknacks and my monthly bill for my whole house is $90 a month. I'd lower it to $1 if I could.

Why? I'd rather have experience and enjoyment rather than "things" and hot electronic devices and lights where I pay a premium to cool them down with a clunky low-efficiency air conditioner.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 21:11:48 2013 No.6080460

>>6080435
>If we ever build a dyson sphere, it will mostly not be made with human hands. Even just keeping such a fantastically complex thing from tearing itself apart from simplest mistakes will require automated systems or AI on a scale only ever fantasized about.
Then why not do something more useful with this AI and automation than build a dyson sphere?

Fuck, here we go again. Build a dyson sphere just to build a dyson sphere.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 21:13:46 2013 No.6080465 >>6080449 >and you're broadcasting your location to the universe. so fucking what you need to read less shitty books about galactic empires and alien menaces

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 21:21:46 2013 No.6080476

>>6080465
Until we know what's out there, it's a good idea not to make it too obvious that we exist.

Anyway, there are lots of reasons not to do a Dyson sphere. It's going to be a big, delicate structure that's easy to attack and impossible to defend.

I've already pointed out the problem with uncontrolled power output.

If you want to harness the energy of a star, there are just better ways than leaving the star intact and trying build around this oversized reactor.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 21:26:46 2013 No.6080483 >>6080460 There we go again, assuming there won't ever be a need for that much power. >>6080445 Yeah, you're still stuck to that whole "dysons r for living"-shtick. If you can't get over it, I might as well go to sleep.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 21:26:46 2013 No.6080484 >>6080476 >Until we know what's out there, it's a good idea not to make it too obvious that we exist. you do realize we're constantly, purposely sending out messages into deep space right?

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 21:27:46 2013 No.6080486
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>>6080465
>today: passive, curious human race.
>dyson sphere age: expansive and expaning human race. Over-breeding, hungrily consuming massive amounts of energy. Extreme galactic threat, human race.

We better hope we're alone if we become the latter. There might be a reason the Fermi paradox is a "thing".

There might be three kinds of civilizations out there.

One like us, tiny, curious and young

Some old, xenophobic race with excellent long range weapons we couldn't begin to understand

And the hungry, dangerous, expanding races that the xenophobic race exterminates them the moment they notice them on their radar.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 21:29:48 2013 No.6080491

>>6080484
>constantly
What? Radio communications? Someone would have to be listening awfully carefully to pick that out.

As opposed to building a structure that changes the radiation from our star completely.

>purposely
Not really, no. There has been one attempted broadcast to extraterrestrials that I know of. We pretty much just do passive listening.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 21:31:48 2013 No.6080495
File: 99 KB, 640x640, radio_broadcasts_thumb.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>6080484
Those messages turn to nothing in a few light years.

Distortion is a huge thing. The reality it, most of our signals turn to mush as they expand.

Also they haven't expanded much- Does anyone have that image that shows how far our signals have gone? They use a tiny blue dot on the surface of a galaxy.

Found it. See? It means dick.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 21:33:18 2013 No.6080500 >>6080486 RKVs aren't really that hard to understand. Hey, another reason to not build a dyson sphere.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 21:35:16 2013 No.6080507

>>6080500
>RKVs
>A relativistic kill vehicle (RKV) or relativistic bomb is a hypothetical weapon system sometimes found in science fiction.

That's what I meant. And yes they are hard to understand. We can't even fathom building a real one. We also wouldn't even know if it exterminated us if it hit.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 21:35:47 2013 No.6080504 >>6080495 But what about the alien race that took that picture from outside of our galaxy and sent it to us?

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 21:36:16 2013 No.6080509 >>6080504 Oh you.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 21:41:16 2013 No.6080518

>>6080507
They're not hard to understand. It's literally a brick, plus an assload of kinetic energy and momentum. It takes all of one equation to understand. Two, if you count the joules-to-tons-TNT conversion equation so you can put it into attention-grabbing terms.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 21:46:16 2013 No.6080527

>>6080518
>They're not hard to understand. It's literally a brick, plus an assload of kinetic energy and momentum.
When you talk like that, you're as bad as the guys proposing that a dyson sphere is even possible.

Creating a RKV is a whole lot harder than we're capable of doing right now. It's on another level and it's why it's science fiction.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 21:50:16 2013 No.6080534

>>6080527
Yeah, CREATING a RKV is hard. UNDERSTANDING them is not. (Just like creating a Dyson Sphere is hard, but understanding them isn't - it's easy to understand what it does, it's easy to understand how one might operate to generate electricity, and all the equations for their mechanical stress and material properties are easy. Creating them, and justifying doing so - that's hard.) They're just a goddamn brick. (What's hard to understand is what GETS the RKV going so fast.)

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 21:53:16 2013 No.6080538 >>6080534 >(What's hard to understand is what GETS the RKV going so fast.) yeah, my point exactly. what's your point again?

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 21:55:33 2013 No.6080544 >>6080538 That a RKV isn't hard to understand. HEAVY OBJECT GOING VERY FAST = LOTS OF KINETIC ENERGY, CAUSES SEVERE DAMAGE WHEN IT HITS SOMETHING. Bam, you've understood an RKV completely. It's not like we're idiots.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 21:58:30 2013 No.6080555

>>6080527
In /sci/, when talking about a dyson sphere, it's generally assumed that the object under discussion is a dyson swarm, which is not impossible. If we had the capital and the resources, we could start building one right now.

Sure, to get a good coverage, we'd have to dismantle Ceres or some small moon, but it's just a problem of scale or time, not one of physics.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 22:00:29 2013 No.6080562 >>6080555 fuck, why not just build a space colony? what's with the dyson hardon. Are you Freeman Dyson?

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 22:05:29 2013 No.6080570

>>6080555
Another thing that's Dyson-y, but still possible, is the dyson BUBBLE, which is actually one big spherical solar sail inflated by radiation pressure. Graphene meets all the material limits for such a structure (well, besides reflectivity- it's 99% transparent, so you might want to back it with ultrathin gold foil or something), it's statically stable so you can build it in chunks and have it still be stable and functional and not worry about stresses and supports, and the total mass needed is less than Pallas.

And then there's the Dyson-Harrop satellite, which is less efficient than Dyson spheres but is orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to build.

>>6080562
I believe the point is that the swam modules could BE space colonies; the idea is just that you're harnessing lots of solar energy.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 22:09:29 2013 No.6080575

>>6079528
>Obviously you haven't read it because there's no peak oil in there. It has nothing to do with peak oil.
Oh the irony.
"We live at a special time. We have enjoyed spending our inheritance of fossil fuels, and are feeling rather heady about our technological prowess. For many generations now, we have ridden an exponential growth track, conditioning ourselves to believe that our upward trajectory is an eternal constant of our existence. We’ll see. When we cross to the down-slope of fossil fuel availability—beginning with oil—we’ll see how timeless the growth phase seems to be, and whether we can afford a continued presence in space."

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 22:19:59 2013 No.6080597 >>6080445 You're living "super efficiently", yet your electric bill is $20/mo less than mine, and I have 5 computers running all the time (Mine, my wife's and my 3 kids).

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 22:27:28 2013 No.6080610 >>6080597 And no wonder, another dyson obsessed space mormon. Shit out more kids while you can.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 22:36:28 2013 No.6080635
File: 1016 KB, 4256x2832, 1378327602980.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>6080570
I do like the bubble concept, but I don't think it can be made indefinitely statically stable. You get one CME and the dynamic stresses will tear the thing into cosmic confetti. But Like in everything else, there's a compromise (the name of which escapes me at the moment) where you build only a few (3-100) LARGE orbiting/floating collectors. These would mostly consist of the solar-sail like materials as in the bubble, but the non-joined structure prevents stress buildup.

>>6080562
Because space colonies are what come way before a dyson sphere. Talking about space colonies ITT would be akin to starting a thread about grand architecture and then discussing the best ways to join table legs to a frame.

We can talk about space colonies too, but preferably in their own thread.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 23:10:59 2013 No.6080684 >>6080610 Yes, because having 3 children is extremely unusual. You're quite fortunate your parents didn't have your attitude about reproduction.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 23:18:01 2013 No.6080700 >>6080684 >You're quite fortunate your parents didn't have your attitude about reproduction. oh fuck, a pro-lifer on 4chan.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 23:19:30 2013 No.6080701

>>6080635

I think that's also a Dyson bubble. It doesn't have to go all the way around.

>>6080610
Dyson spheres aren't for living space, you idiot. You CAN'T live on a Dyson sphere. They're only useful for power collection. Most of the reason you'd want to build a Dyson sphere comes from very high-energy projects, like beamed-power interstellar travel.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 23:21:59 2013 No.6080704 >>6080700 You really shouldn't make it a habit of assuming things incorrectly.

Anonymous Wed Oct 9 23:40:14 2013 No.6080736

>>6080356
Well given that we have a huge fusion furnace in the sky that radiating yottawatts of power into cold empty space, it's a waste that we aren't harnessing it

>>human dyson sphere
Humans probably won't make a dyson sphere. By the time we have the technology to make a dyson sphere, machines will be a lot better than humans.

The machines could very well make something called a Matrioshka brain a much more efficient alternative to a dyson sphere: an immense cloud of computronium surrounding the sun, with the inner layers being powered off of solar energy, the middle layers being powered off of the temperature difference between the inner layers and outer layers and the outer layer powered off the temperature difference between the middle layers and outer space.

Such a system extracts the maximum amount of power out of a star and uses it in the most efficient way possible supporting a huge population of AIs.

>>6080423
>>Wouldn't a dyson sphere be a giant prison?
it's less of a prison than the current solar system is now, or the Earth would be if we limited the population until the sun burned out.

With large amounts of energy, one has the capacity to easily reach relativistic velocities and escape the solar system.

>>But if everyone leaves, the usefulness of the sphere would diminish.
Or one could support a huge amount of life that isn't humans by letting some of the habitats go wild. Certainly a lot better than having lifeless empty space. Or just build a matrioshka brain.

>>It won't be used for science, computation and discovery
It will, research is usually a small percent of GDP, but with a very large GDP, one can do quite a bit of research

>>it'll be for every human to have a mansion with the square footage of earth
that's a damn lot better than having people starving

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 23:54:46 2013 No.6080761 >>6074161 10/10

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 9 23:57:48 2013 No.6080765 >>6080736 >that's a damn lot better than having people starving you don't know what a dystopia is do you?

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 00:00:16 2013 No.6080769

>>6080423
This is a common misconception:

You cannot live on the surface of a Dyson sphere. At a distance of 1 AU, the surface gravity on the Dyson sphere would be 0.0006 g, and the mass of the shell itself would provide effectively no gravity - on the inside of the spherical shell, the gravity the shell cancels itself out, and you're just left with the tiny inward pull towards the Sun; on the outside, the shell's mass is so low and the pull from the Sun so tiny that there's also practically no gravity.

Secondly, a solid-shell Dyson sphere like this is mechanically impossible - first off, there's just not enough solid matter in the solar system to build it. Even if we disassembled the entire Solar System, even taking apart the gas giants to get at their core, we'd still only have enough building material to produce a 20-cm thick shell, at maximum.

And this 20-cm shell would have to withstand INCREDIBLE compressive stress; Any arbitrarily selected point on the surface of the sphere can be viewed as being under the pressure of the base of a dome 1 AU IN HEIGHT under the Sun's gravity at that distance. No material we know of even comes CLOSE, and certainly none come close at a thickness of 20 cm.

A solid Dyson shell, in other words, 1. Cannot possibly be built, and 2. Even if we had access to an unlimited supply of Unobtainium, we couldn't live on it.

Forget talking about how a Dyson sphere would be " for every human to have a mansion with the square footage of earth, filled with "things" and shit to the ceiling like you'd see on "Hoarders™". Consume, consume, consume. There will be time for nothing else." - a Dyson sphere has ZERO HABITABLE SURFACE AREA. It exists only to provide power for other habitats or space projects.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 00:01:17 2013 No.6080773 File: 233 KB, 1600x830, 1381212075025.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] What about a galactic dyson structure?

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 00:04:03 2013 No.6080779

>>6080445
>>>>6080445
>>I'd rather have experience and enjoyment rather than "things" and hot electronic devices and lights where I pay a premium to cool them down with a clunky low-efficiency air conditioner.
Well, with a dyson sphere, you could probably afford to take a trip to another star system.

>>6080476
Generally, it's a bad idea to attack a Dyson sphere, because they're so damn big. Dyson spheres are not spheres, they're a swarm of satellites orbiting around a star harnessing it's solar power. One might be able to take out a couple satellites with an RKV, but it's going to be very hard to take out ALL satellites.

Thus, this gives whoever owns said dyson sphere, plenty of chances to retaliate. Now if a civilization that did not have a dyson sphere were to against one that did, it'd be like a sponge trying to go against a nuclear missile.
siphoning off material to burn in fusion reactors is going to be just as visible and probably even more so.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 00:05:02 2013 No.6080780 >>6080769 >At a distance of 1 AU What kind of idiot would build a Dyson sphere at a distance of 1AU?

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 00:06:02 2013 No.6080784 >>6080780 My bad, it'd have to be at 1.66 AU. That's the radius a Dyson sphere needs to be in order to usefully dissipate power.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 00:11:32 2013 No.6080790 >>6080784 >assumptions assumptions assumptions

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 00:15:03 2013 No.6080798 >>6080790 What kind of idiot would build a Dyson sphere which could not effectively radiate heat into space, thus causing the sphere to heat up to extreme temperature and melt?

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 00:17:33 2013 No.6080801

>>6080798
And, more importantly in the context of Dyson spheres, a hot close-in sphere is inefficient. The further out the sphere is, the higher the surface area, and so the more effectively the sphere can radiate waste heat into the "cold reservoir" of space, and so the higher the Carnot efficiency.

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 00:18:32 2013 No.6080804

>>6080798
As I pointed out before, that figure is based on a lot of assumptions, which I'm pretty sure are not reasonable.

Maybe you'd like to state those assumptions. Then again, maybe you wouldn't, since you don't strike me as the type that likes to reveal his bad reasoning.

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 00:21:24 2013 No.6080809

>>6080801
Okay, now I *know* you're a twit who likes to just throw terms around you don't really understand.

Sunlight is *highly* ordered energy. The difference in collection efficiency between having cold radiators and hot radiators on your collector, over the range that solid structures can endure, is going to be negligible.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 00:27:26 2013 No.6080820 >>6080804 Okay, I'm actually stating my assumptions. I know it's taking a while, but 4chan ate my post the first time I tried to submit it. Hold on a sec while I retype.

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 00:40:25 2013 No.6080839

>>6080820

Okay. Assumptions and deductive chain:

1. Anything in space with an energy source needs to radiate heat in order to get rid of waste heat, because without convection and conduction there's nowhere else for heat to go. If you're not radiating as much waste heat as you're producing, your temperature will heat up until you are. The amount of heat you can radiate at a certain temperature depends on your surface area.

2. No matter what you're using to collect solar radiation, it's not going to be perfectly efficient - there's going to be some waste heat. (Indeed, there might well be a lot of it - thermophotovoltaics and photovoltaics have very limited efficiencies right now.)

3. The efficiency of solar power is limited by the Carnot efficiency, since it's fundamentally another type of heat engine. Does that have anything to do with this? I think so, yeah.

4. So you've got this waste heat, and you've probably got a lot of it. If you don't radiate it, the temperature of the Dyson sphere is going to rise.

5. The amount of power you can radiate from a surface at a given temperature depends on the surface area, and since the Dyson sphere is a sphere, it depends on the radius.

6. A Dyson sphere snuggled right up next to the star (surface area = very close to sun's surface area) would have a temperature a good fraction of the Sun, since it's got about the same surface area and efficiency is such that there's a hefty chunk of waste heat left over. This is probably much too hot, and it'll cool down as radius increases, so there's obviously a minimum temperature for a Dyson sphere somewhere between r= sun's radius and r=infinity.

7. Somebody else has probably done the math before me on what the precise number is for this minimum limit.

8. Google turns up "1.66 AU" as the minimum limit in a published scientific paper.

9. Ergo, I can safely post 1.66 AU as the minimum radius for a Dyson sphere and feel pretty confident about it.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 00:42:54 2013 No.6080842 >>6080839 Sorry, "obviously a minimum radius of acceptable temperature for a Dyson sphere", in Step 6.

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 01:05:26 2013 No.6080871

>>6079528
>He's a tenured professor of physics… something you will never be.

Yes he is, but he's also not a bad journalist, check out the article he wrote. This is not a physics article, its a commentary on society, that is the realm of journalists. Doesn't matter what he does when he's not doing this, he can be the best physicist in the world, this is still journalism. You should judge the quality of works based on the quality of the work, rather than the authority of the figure who produced them.

As to whether I'll ever be a professor of physics, that would indeed be a very unlikely career move for me, though its not exactly relevant...

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 01:10:56 2013 No.6080874 >>6080839 In summary: >Google said someone else thought so. I don't know why they thought so, but I assume they're right. For reasons.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 01:14:55 2013 No.6080881 >>6080874 In summary: "This number should exist, and this is what Google thinks the number is."

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 01:20:57 2013 No.6080886

>>6080871
The article is dumb. Full of bad reasoning.

>No bounty of food or sense of safety tugs us into space.
Food = energy and mineral resources in this analogy. We're a technological society, we don't need hamburgers floating around in space. We need places to set up multiple-square-km solar concentrators with no wind to knock them down, and places where we can spill nuclear waste and it doesn't really matter. We need platinum-group metals by the ton.

Safety = not being in range of ICBMs, not being in the same nuclear blast radius with millions of other helpless targets, not being in the same biosphere with people developing bioweapons.

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 01:21:56 2013 No.6080888

>>6080881
And can you tell me why there isn't a minimum Dyson sphere radius? I realize that I used poor research technique, but upon reading the paper I pulled the number from, their math seems sound.

By the way, here's the paper that gave that radius:

"On the Radius of Dyson's Sphere - Viorel Badescu"

http://ac.els-cdn.com/009457659500009O/1-s2.0-009457659500009O-main.pdf?_tid=bb5854fc-316b-11e3-98ef-00000aab0f02&acdnat=1381382632_3fccf0659d23964a56299d19f54af077

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 01:28:56 2013 No.6080899

>>6080888
>Two assumptions were accepted in this paper. First, the ambient temperature on the Dyson sphere (DS) is close to the physiological optimum of human beings.

>The inner DS surface of temperature r, constitutes the habitat of mankind.

Remember the context in which you introduced the figure you got from this paper. Note the conflict between the assumptions of this paper, and the argument you attempted to base on the paper's conclusions.

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 01:32:57 2013 No.6080906

>>6080899
You're right. I am guilty of research failure; I apologize, and retract my previous statements, and will attempt to do better in the future so as to increase argument quality.

However, I still maintain that there's a minimum radius of a Dyson sphere; merely that T-sub-0, the ambient temperature, should not be the habitat temperature of human beings, but rather the temperature at which the Dyson sphere loses structural integrity or the machinery involved overheats. This is, of course, a much higher number, and so the radius is likely to be considerably less than 1.66 AU. What would you consider a reasonable working temperature for a Dyson sphere?

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 01:44:19 2013 No.6080920

>>6080906
The Dyson sphere could consist of foil concentrators which reflect the light at small angles of deflection into dusty plasma photovoltaic devices which are external to the sphere and act as the radiators as well as the power generators.

This would permit both very high efficiencies and the toleration of very intense radiation, along with low-mass construction.

Any estimate of the minimum radius would be, at best, a dressed-up guess, so I won't bother dressing mine up: I'd assume it would at least be well within the orbit of Mercury.

Other designs could use magnetic fields to manipulate the sun's plasma as a way to extract energy and matter, possibly with some components even extending into what is currently the sun's surface.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 01:46:49 2013 No.6080922 >>6080920 Fair enough. Wouldn't that still run into all the various materials-science problems of a solid Dyson sphere, though?

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 01:53:49 2013 No.6080928 >>6074133 >#2 what makes you think humanity won't destroy itself God will not allow it

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 01:54:17 2013 No.6080929 >>6079272 >constant starvation >endemic war >population continues to increase exponentially Actually they're pretty fucking terrible at arresting population growth.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 01:58:18 2013 No.6080933 >Implying a dyson sphere is efficient in the least

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 01:58:48 2013 No.6080934 >>6080395 Well, that is one of the most basic ways of measuring an organisms success. Plus for all we know 40k is prophetic and we're going to need trillions of humans to stem the tide of Orks, Tyranids and Chaos...

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 02:00:19 2013 No.6080935 >>6080395 You think the that the BASIC FUNCTION OF LIFE is a peculiar and noxious train of thought? Are you fucking retarded?

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 02:10:48 2013 No.6080939

>>6080395
>humanity has some kind of duty to spread as far and as thick as possible into the universe.
Hey!
Until we create a morally and intellectually superior race, the universes best hope for a thinking creature is us. We are quite vulnerable creatures so spreading and multiplying are best defenses. Until the meaning of life is discovered (which likely doesn't even exist) the universe requires something capable of investigating the question.

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 02:28:40 2013 No.6080964
File: 163 KB, 1173x1600, Aliens In Space 3 Joe Petagno.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>6080934
>>6080935
>>6080939
see >>6080159
Quality over quantity.

If the 'morally right' course of action were to have as many people living as possible, we'd be living in a mormonic dystopia and would be well on our way to a societal collapse, perhaps even an extinction event.

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 02:31:11 2013 No.6080968

>>6080964
Kindly explain how something likely leading to an extinction event would be "morally right" if having maximal humans spread over maximal volume was a morally right course of action? By definition, an extinction event minimizes total humans, ergo to follow a course leading to extinction would be morally wrong were maximum humans morally right.

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 02:39:39 2013 No.6080987
File: 318 KB, 1484x1600, 02 PETER ELSON - THE EINSTEIN INTERSECTION.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>6080968
Mormonic hell implies religion-like lack of forethought, so pre-collapse, you're going to get a lot of preachers proclaiming the second coming and end of the world, so it's okay if the species is ruined, since we'll all be in paradise anyway.

Sure, from a longer point of view, it's really fucking stupid, but that's what you get when religions want more humans no matter what.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 02:40:41 2013 No.6080988 >>6080987 Sorry, you don't get to suddenly shift the topic by complaining about religion. This is /sci/; we're all euphoric here.

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 02:53:40 2013 No.6081014

>>6080988
I'm not shifting anything. The only reason for large-scale population explosion at this time is either poverty or religious fundamentalism, with the latter being the major rather than the minor contributor.

So I doubt you will see a global resurgence of a must-make-more-babbys-all-the-time mentality, which makes that part of the discussion moot.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 03:29:10 2013 No.6081058 >>6080964 I don't care about morals, genes propagate, its what their for. If you're going to call that 'peculiar and noxious' then you're peculaiar and stupid.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 03:30:10 2013 No.6081060 >>6081058 >their they're

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 03:50:21 2013 No.6081075 >>6081060 Genes are just a means of data transfer. They have no special importance. Claiming so would be 'peculaiar'. Civilization is a more useful and important means of data transfer than your ballgoop.

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 03:59:52 2013 No.6081080

>>6081075
You understand that humans are living organisms right? Gene's aren't a means of data transfer, they're a means of data storage and replication. The replication part is what's important, not for magical reasons, but because that's just how they turn out to be. Fusion is important for stars, replication is important for life.

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 06:20:00 2013 No.6081156

>>6080486
>We better hope we're alone if we become the latter. There might be a reason the Fermi paradox is a "thing".
Yeah, it's because space is too goddamn big and empty for a species to waste vast amounts of resources sending out people to live on barely-habitable planets, or travelling all this way to do a meet and greet with talking apes.

The Fermi paradox is based on an extremely suspect notion: that there is any value in colonizing other star systems.
>There might be three kinds of civilizations out there.
>One like us, tiny, curious and young
>Some old, xenophobic race with excellent long range weapons we couldn't begin to understand
>And the hungry, dangerous, expanding races that the xenophobic race exterminates them the moment they notice them on their radar.
yeah, again, you need to stop reading bad sci-fi

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 06:27:30 2013 No.6081159 >>6081156 No it isn't. That's not what the Fermi paradox is based on at all. The Fermi paradox is "why haven't we detected alien transmissions" , not "why haven't we physically met aliens."

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 06:30:59 2013 No.6081161 >>6081080 You do know that being genetically human is in the scheme of civilization a rather minor thing? Without the more important data transfer after birth, you might as well not be a human, but just another beast.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 06:33:29 2013 No.6081164 >>6081161 While philosophically true, as far as we can tell only genetically human organisms can accept said data transfer, and this is likely to persist for a good long while.

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 06:36:29 2013 No.6081166

>>6074263

>We could start on a Dyson Structure today

Wrong. We don't have the technology for the reason this >>6074223 project is still in development. We don't have any way to beam it here without the wavelength increasing and becoming too spread out.

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 06:38:29 2013 No.6081167

>>6081159
>The Fermi paradox is "why haven't we detected alien transmissions"
Maybe we have and just didn't recognize them as such

Maybe we're not looking hard enough

Maybe all the aliens are sending out is waves of indecipherable shit that turns out to be 300 channels of gorlax porn and trashy talk shows

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 06:44:00 2013 No.6081169 >>6079272 Wrong. A free market is.

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 07:50:59 2013 No.6081218

>>6078286

>Why build a dyson sphere when you can just provide birth control?

Not op but birth control is based off controlling the consumption of resources by humans, not machines.

The dyson sphere is to take account for machine technology reaching a point where it's as wide spread as plant life itself is on earth.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 07:53:29 2013 No.6081220 >>6081218 >The dyson sphere is to take account for machine technology reaching a point where it's as wide spread as plant life itself is on earth. and why would this happen

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 07:54:28 2013 No.6081222 >>6081220 because Singularity Ray Kurzweil Strong AI Hard Takeoff Moore's Law Eric Drexler Nanotechnology Exponential Growth Cyborgs Post-Scarcity Economy Transhumanism Extropian Grey Goo,

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 08:10:59 2013 No.6081231 >>6081220 Why would there be three cars to every human in Amerikka?

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 08:22:30 2013 No.6081250 >>6080248 >people in the 60s thought there would be tiny atomic reactors in everything from your wristwatch to your television to your cars [citated nissions]

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 08:31:29 2013 No.6081260 >>6081250 >has never been to paleofuture

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 08:54:29 2013 No.6081282 >>6081231 Cars are cheap compared to people. What kind of absurd machinery would require (according to >>6074334) 185 million times the power consumption of humanity?

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 09:37:31 2013 No.6081312

>>6080045
Population growth have been linear, adding some 2 billion people per 20 years or so for the last 50 years. Assuming a continuation of that trend it will take a very, very long time to reach 10^12.

The idea that every couple have three children and we get exponential growth is obviously not working out that well.

Anonymous Thu Oct 10 09:41:59 2013 No.6081315
File: 279 KB, 1600x1218, PE1.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>6081282
What kind of absurd machinery today would require 195 million times the power consumption of humanity in the 15th century?

Quite a lot, actually.

Like I've said, several times, you can't predict that our power consumption will stay the same over centuries. Expecially when it rises by significant percentage every fucking year.

You're still stuck to the
>'with infinite power, I can heat up water for my tea pretty fast'
-kind of thingking, instead of
>'with infinite power, we can do physics experiments never dreamed of, launch interstellar probes full auto, boil away too-thick atmospheres at interstellar distances and melt away the Europan ice cover, oh and Mars now has tectonics'
-kind of thinking.

With more power, we can be awesome, instead of being slightly more mundane.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 09:43:29 2013 No.6081317 >>6081312 Population growth is always exponential, for reasons which should be obvious if you take a second to think about it. The rate can change, though, and it has been decreasing. It may even go to zero or even negative.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 09:47:59 2013 No.6081320 >>6081317 >Population growth is always exponential That's just plain wrong

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 09:49:59 2013 No.6081324 >>6081317 >Population growth is always exponential >It may even go to zero or even negative. It seems I don't need to dispute your claims, you're perfectly capable of doing it yourself.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 09:50:00 2013 No.6081328 >>6081317 retard/10

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 09:51:59 2013 No.6081330 >>6081317 Jesus fucking christ I had a good chuckle

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 10:12:28 2013 No.6081351 >>6081320 >>6081324 >>6081328 >>6081330 samefag retard

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 10:15:28 2013 No.6081354 >>6081324 If you are implying there is a contradiction between those statements then you are wrong. Exponential means that the rate of change is proportional to the size. Zero change is technically the limiting case. Decrease is also perfectly valid.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 10:19:59 2013 No.6081358 >>6074214 >implying money is a problem in these things.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 10:28:28 2013 No.6081371 >>6081315 >With more power, we can be awesome so is that your final answer

Violent Simians Guy Thu Oct 10 10:38:59 2013 No.6081383

>>6080179

Humans reproduce and expand in population to fit the current resource supply. Provide "other Earths" and Humans will snap-pow-bang fill each of those Earths with billions of Humans.

Why is this so hard for you retards to grasp? A Dyson Structure will provude living space, materials and power to support trillions if not quadrillions of people. So they will reproduce there just like they are now, expanding in population... eventually reaching trillions and quadrillions.

I'm sure tribal Humans would have not believed that billions of Humans would be alive at once. They didn't understand large-scale resource exploitation. We do. At least... those of us who aren't RETARDED.

Not that I believe Humans will even expand off the Earth. Leaving the planet is a huge economic barrier since it's a huge ENERGY barrier. It will be much cheaper and equally profitable to just kill off Humans by the billion to reach a new stasis point with less available resources, particular energy. (And Humans are vicious, cunning animals, more than willing to kill each other to gain the slightest advantage.)

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 10:50:00 2013 No.6081401 >>6074124 >implying the nuclear fusion model for stars is accurate >implying the energy source isn't actually coming from without the star >implying everything we see about stars doesn't indicate that they're heated from the outside, in

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 11:09:58 2013 No.6081425 >>6081354 If you're implying there isn't a contradiction between those statements then you're retarded and nothing I say will ever change that. Enjoy your propeller hat and bonus chromosomes.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 10 11:10:59 2013 No.6081427 >>6081401 wow hold your horses, dyson sphere is doable even if >1 >2 >3 are true, we get energy from sun, either by exposing our skin to it, or exposing satellite wingsmembrane collector stuff

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