DYSON SPHERES

DYSON SPHERES:

THE STUFF OF DELUSION AND NIGHTMARES.

This essay was spurned after I kept seeing this weird Japanese Utopian writer competition floating around the internet waves. 

They wanted sci-fi writers to submit stories on how great Dyson Spheres are. This is basically a bio-sphere built around a star. 

They even had a promo video of families living the high life,  like in the movie Avatar - with exotic jungles, waterfalls and creatures, all defying physics, in a utopia built within said Dyson Sphere.

Initially this all sounded like great fun. But then I started doing the research. And it blew my mind. Then I thought about the implications and the delusions of actually taking such a concept seriously.  

So let’s just lay it out. 

Contrary to common belief, a Dyson sphere is not a giant hard-shell bio-sphere built around a star. But ask any dumb-ass on the street (myself included) and they will quote something they saw in Star Trek and tell you how fucking cool a Dyson Sphere would be. 

The Japanese website makes it all sound so cozy and achievable. But such an monumental accomplishment would be impossible by our primitive standards. And even in some far-flung Roger Ramjet future, to mine the materials alone would require cannibalising not only our own planets resources but that of every planetoid in our solar system. 

We would have to be pretty desperate to want to do that. 

Nor would it be possible to harness the suns radiation, light and heat by any feasible means, without opening up a whole can of veritable worms. 

Thus such a thing would be the stuff of nightmares. A bit like the Death Star.  

So its the ultimate con, so to speak. The idea might sound great on a dumbed-down kiddy slide-show but in reality, building a spherical shell around a star? This presents way too many headaches. As we shall see.  

A QUESTION OF PHYSICS 

I mean, we’re talking about building a giant fucking metal ball wrapped around a star? Our own Sun by the way,  is moving around The Milky Way Galaxy at a rate of 450,000 miles an hour. That’s like trying to envelope a speeding bullet with a balloon on a Merry Go Round. Probably.  

And that balloon is just that. A huge fragile sphere hanging in the void, just waiting to be punctured by passing meteors and other space debris. We forget how lucky we are. Our solar system has Jupiter hoovering up most of the random asteroids that enter our back yard. But without it, it’s open season for any celestial body to take a shot at us. So building a Dyson Sphere is just dumbass. In every sense of the word. 

MESSING WITH THE ECO-SYSTEM

But what if you could? Well, then not only have you mined all your planets for materials but you’d probably need to mine passing comets of their water as well. After all, you want vast oceans right? You need an self-sustaining eco-system to grow things. So you're gonna need clouds. How else is it going to rain? 

So yeah, you would need to hijack comets and other bodies of water. And that in itself might fuck things up for the interstellar eco-system that might also require comets to deliver water. 

Messing with our galactic eco-system might be as bad as Monsanto cornering the market on one generation seeds. We would reduce the likelihood of comets delivering water to potential planetoids that would others wise create life.  

It could be that the soul reason why our universe is so quiet is that Type 2 civilisations have built Dyson spheres, that have created deserts of solar systems. Denying others of the right to life. It could also be a reality that such spheres are dead husks, resulting from war or solar radiation. 

TOO DARK TO SEE...

Plus they would be invisible to our telescopes. At present, our only way to detect advanced civilisations on other planets is under the assumption that they have created the light bulb and need to light their houses at night time. This we might see from our telescopes. But unless a Dyson sphere was illuminated from the outside, we would likely mistake it for a black hole or not see it at all. 

Type III civilisations might encompass their entire galaxies in them. So unless there is some interstellar governing body insisting on hazard lights to avoid collisions, it could be that huge Dyson Spheres just float around out there, that make our Milky Way look tiny by comparison. 

Come to think of it, maybe at the centre of our Galaxy is such a monster, and we're all spinning around it oblivious. 

Fuck it, let’s just say that the whole universe is inside one giant mother-fucking Dyson Sphere and be done with it. But the mind boggles at such a concept. 

WALMART SYNDROME

So let’s just keep to our local solar system for now. 

Even if humans could achieve it, (or any intelligent organic life for that matter) it would only lead to a sort of Walmart Syndrome . 

We've mined everything to build it.  But how? Same way we get anything done.  

We’re talking about a privileged few reaping the rewards, using a massive gobbling entity. A monster that is created, by conning the untold masses of workers into slavery. 

Like how big business conned hundreds of Irish workers into a piece of the good life, to build our infrastructure of motorways, scaring the surface of mother Earth. Like the con of communism under Stalins boot. Or the Nazis building an entire new Germany based on a lie. 

Like the 1950s American dream that technology would have us all in flying cars by now, just like the Jetsons.  These are all cons to build an empire based on lies. 

In a way, the Dyson sphere would be the ultimate folly of mankind. The impossible dream it could never reach. An inverted world with its star at its centre, shining light onto its many continents, spaced apart by various idyllic oceans.  Kids playing on beaches, parents enjoying lazy sunny afternoons. 

Weird anti–gravity creatures. Shit like that. 

Even if it were possible, such entities would be literal cluster-fucks. The equivalent of said Walmart landing in your backyard and putting everyone out of business, until there’s nothing left. 

The theory goes that such impossible spheres would make the universe a hell of a lot darker. I mean, basically you are encasing a light bulb in a black ball. It’s really gonna fuck up those lesser planets still using constellation maps. 

‘Hey dude!’ Where the fuck has Alpha Centuri gone? Where the fuck is the Great Space Plough?’ 

‘The universe is going dark!’ 

‘The end is nigh!’ 

HOW FUCKING BIG? 

I’m no scientist but. Imagine it if you can. Using our planet as a reference, Earth is currently orbiting our sun at a distance of 93 Million miles, right? And at that distance the sun is hot enough to evaporate liquid water and create the eco system that we have. 

Now take that 93 million miles and double it and make that your sphere diameter.

That’s a whopping 186 Million fucking miles. As a sphere. Not to mention all the land masses within it and vast rolling oceans. Ok so now we got our Dyson Sphere. Great. But uh-oh. We’ve built all our land masses on the inside, with a light source we can’t seem to turn off. 

That’s like being under the UV lamp indefinitely. Like leaving the roast and veg under the deli lights for weeks, years, centuries. Yep that’s right. All the waters gonna evaporate. All the land-based foliage is going to shrivel up and die. In fact there won’t be anything. Just a burnt to a crisp shell encompassing a sun. Great. Who fucked that up? 

BLACK SUNS

The only hope then, would be an orbiting planet within, or artificial sun blocker that essentially creates the same conditions of day and night. In as much as the heat from your host star is not roasting its occupants on a daily basis. Such a device would probably be essentially another sphere, that encompasses the sun between the outer shell. 

This inner sphere would be a Black Sun. In as much as it would be a huge black sphere blocking out the heat and light of the sun itself. The only difference being that it would have a huge slit in it and this slit would allow heat and light to escape. This black sphere would rotate slowly, (say every 24 hours) providing light across the land masses. There may even be two slits or more. But essentially this device would act like a light house, beaming out light and heat upon the land, just enough to create the feeling of day and night and possibly even seasons. 

Of course this is all pie in the sky bullshit. Because to build it would mean cannibalising an entire solar system, perhaps even several, just to pull it off. 

So yeah, any notion of an actual physical sphere would be a no-go. 

DYSON SPHERES BUILT BY MACHINES

So only a society that has essentially destroyed its planets eco-system with war, pollution and an abundance of car parks would even consider it. We’re talking proper Borg territory here. 

Thus the only possible recourse to this, would be the eventual evolution of AI. Or AGI. And that would only be after they’ve already wiped humanity from existence. It could be that such ruthless, artificial intelligences already exist somewhere in the cold voids of space. 

Such creatures would show no mercy to organic life. Particularly if such machines required the absolute energy they could harness from its sun. So in such a scenario, machines would likely cannibalise planets, asteroids and comets in order to pull off such a venture. Because no human in their right mind would do it, considering the implications. 

A machine future could only lead to a possible Matrioshka Brain. A huge Dyson Sphere Computer. Programmed by organics dumb enough to allow it independent thought. Imagine Star Treks Doomsday Machine. Basically the Death Star with a mind of its own.

LEGACY

The Dyson sphere, even if it was (somehow) pulled off, wouldn’t make life any better for the poor souls that would have to physically build it. 

We are talking about the ultimate legacy of our race, build by the collective death of infinite slaves, duped into it, just like the slaves who were duped into building the Pyramids. (the crap ones, the others were built by aliens. Everyone knows that). 

And anyway, we wouldn’t have learned a fucking thing from our past. It would still be a fool’s paradise. Like a huge interplanetary resort. We’re talking about the ultimate bachelors planet: Hookers, cocaine. No Father Christmas, that’s for fucking sure.

DEVOLUTION 

And it wouldn’t last either. Sooner or later it would devolve. Either by war or other. Until the inhabitants had receded back to cave men. You might get the odd renaissance. Somebody might even re-invent electricity. A pre-industrial society might re-emerge. But all would be oblivious to their origins. Much like how we speculate on our own origins. 

Dyson Bibles would be knocked up, speculating all sorts of mystic nonsense:  

Oh yay and the Great Lord Dyson, did say “let there be light” and then he creatith the heavens and the world in six days and rested on the seventh…

Amen. 

Shit like that.  So we would have all the hallmarks of a tragic comedy on a universal scale. The remnants of a once great Type Two civilisation, who can no longer add two and two together and have no fucking clue about the reality around them. Sound familiar? 

DYSON SWARM

So a more accurate and real description wouldn’t be a Dyson Swarm,  which is essentially a loose collection of artificial satellites (such as small space craft or other machines) that encompass a star. 

In a way, our planet is already surrounded by such satellites, creating its own Dyson swarm. Our atmosphere is a veritable hornets nest of space junk. Now envision a plethora of space-faring folk constructing various types of solar arrays around our Sun. All different kinds of celestial bodies would then be orbiting our star, as diverse to each other as a VW Beetle is to a Cadillac. Each a solar collector, made by a different space company, agency or whatever.  

FREEMAN DYSON

Ultimately this was the vision that was explored by the physicist Freeman Dyson in his 1960 paper "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation". But somewhere along the way, his vision was perverted into the realms of sci-fi, to the point that he had disowned the notion and regretted ever being named after it. 

All in all, the Dyson sphere proposal was only ever a thought experiment, much like Schrodinger’s Cat.  A mere hypothesis. The consequences of which are akin to Oppenheimer regretting his decision to dreaming up the atomic bomb. 

And we all know how that is turning out...