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Dyson Sphere not plausible?
marc8219
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
With season 8 coming out I got to reading up on Dyson Spheres some and it seems like to me this wouldn't work even if you are way more advanced then the Federation. Due to the way gravity works with spheres I think there will be no gravitation holding the sphere in place
and it will collide with the star unless thrusters are used, which would require massive power I don't even want to think about. Also there would be no gravity on the surface of the sphere, artificial gravity would be needed. It would need lots of power for a structural integrity field or stronger materials then currently known to survive the stress from the suns pull too.
Something not quite as far fetched would be Larry Niven's Ringworld, it would have gravity through centrifical force and might not use all the materials in the soloar system and more to build it.
and it will collide with the star unless thrusters are used, which would require massive power I don't even want to think about. Also there would be no gravity on the surface of the sphere, artificial gravity would be needed. It would need lots of power for a structural integrity field or stronger materials then currently known to survive the stress from the suns pull too.
Something not quite as far fetched would be Larry Niven's Ringworld, it would have gravity through centrifical force and might not use all the materials in the soloar system and more to build it.
Tala -KDF Tac- House of Beautiful Orions
Post edited by marc8219 on
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2. yes, the sphere will tear its host star apart
3. As current levels of technology does allow for manipulation of gravity, the gravity effects of the sun and the sphere will not have an impact.
4. a G star will put out energy in the Yattawattage range. That's enough energy to power the gravity fields and keep the lights running...
5. By using artificial gravity fields for the sphere and the star, you would be dragging the star around with the sphere.
Same reason why our own sun hasn't run us over by now or left us behind and run off with Saturn.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
I know it's not STO canon, but it sounds like part of what you're talking about...
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
As to whether or not it's plausible?
Space magic.
At best it would be a soap bubble. Not a shell.
to be more precise, yes, it would depend on the star's gravity well. However, that is only a partial part of the equation. The craft in question, in this case the sphere, would ALSO have to be traveling at EXACTLY the same velocity as the star it contains. Otherwise, the sphere pieces would eventually collide with the star inside.
How would you even build the thing before you have to worry about whether it'll collide with its own star? And why would you build one? There's too many variables to make a useful guess at the mass of a 200,000,000km* diameter metal shell (such as density and thickness), but it's potentially thousands or even millions of times that of the Earth. So mining the base materials and then working from there is a non-starter.
So you'd have to build the whole thing from scratch by matter replication. Now, if you can replicate something that size (even gradually over time), how many starships & bases can you build instead for the same effort? How many planets can you terraform?
Still, it'll probably look cool in the game.
*That's how big the one in the series was.
the energy output of a star, if totally collected... is immense...
I cannot answer the first part of how. As to the why: Stars are the only things in the universe that use nuclear Fusion and not burning out a second after the process starts (usually). I SUPPOSE a civilization COULD be interested in building one of these in the interests of harnessing that raw power from the star!
The Dev Blog mentions that the object is one AU in diameter; one would assume the star thus encased is an M-class red dwarf, as anything larger would have an uncomfortably hot interior. (In fact, the exterior must be studded with heat radiators; Dyson supposed that some of the red supergiant stars we can see mostly in infrared could be his [discontinuous] orbital habitats.)
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=830911
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=835141
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=869741
Sir Isaac Newton would disagree according to his shell theorem.
"If the body is a spherically symmetric shell (i.e., a hollow ball), no net gravitational force is exerted by the shell on any object inside, regardless of the object's location within the shell."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_theorem
A few science fiction writers (Stephen Baxter's Time Ships) have an interesting solution to the mass issue: The mass of the sphere is a tiny fraction of the parent star's mass. The observer in Time Ships is on a time machine when he sees the sphere constructed, but its process takes long enough that the description fills in a lot of the gaps:
He first see's the Earth's rotation halted (it's not later made clear why this is done), after which sees a swarm of massive objects very close to the sun, which stay there for thousands of years. He then sees two pillars of light extending from the poles of the sun, which expand to form a dull red sphere occupying most of the sky, and when it darkens the sun appears to be gone and the Earth dies around him.
What's later described is a set of large solar collectors close to the sun (a partial close-range Dyson swarm) that stored up energy to create a massive magnetic field that ejected the outer layers of the sun and formed them into a sphere between the orbits of Venus and Earth. The process destroyed the collectors, but left a cloud of gas that other vessels could synthesize into the materials used in the sphere, with the cloud providing both raw materials and fuel for the process. (Venus and Mercury were destroyed, but it's not clear if they were destroyed by the ejection or if they were somehow cleared before it like the change to Earth's rotation).
Yes that's one of the other reasons I don't think its plausible. The Dyson Sphere in TNG would probably take more then the mass of the Sol system to make it, then only a small percentage of that mass would be materials sutible for building it. I doubt replicator technology to make the materials on such a large scale is feasible either, it would take the power of something like a star, which you would need the dyson sphere already completed to fully harness.
Its Science Fiction, not fiction, or fantasy, it has to be based on science.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be a Dyson Sphere, there just needs to be a plausible explantion for one.
Warp drive was a concept that couldnt be proofed until recently. Now we've developed warp theory. Our only problem is, that the amount of energy required to warp space around us, is far beyond our means.
Star trek says it takes gigawatts of energy, to warp space, although it seems that Phoenix was done with megawattage. But at our current abilities, it would be in the tera range or even peta range. That's beyond our current output. If I recall correctly, the entire earth's output is barely in the tera range.
They just developed the concept for lightsabers. They're trying to figure out a way to create transporters. We have teleporters but that's not wanted as that destroys matter. Wormhole theory (from stargate) and tricorders, communicators, directed energy beams... cloaking, shields... there's many more
why? Because they saw it on tv and were determined to prove it was possible.
Right now, we can say that's not quite possible with our concepts so it's time to create new concepts. How the heck would that be possible?
See, humans don't go "oh that's impossible" and forget about it. We go "Hmm, that's currently impossible, so how do we make it possible?"
We take the rules of this universe and we challenge it, develop new rules or bend them. We're the universe's bad boys of science.
No. I don't realize that. Scientists don't "prove" things. Proofs are for mathematicians. Scientists create models that explain observed phenomenon and then set about trying to make them fail. A hypothesis must be falsifiable, else it tells us nothing new.
The question wasn't, "is it possible". The question was, "is it plausible". My answer is, no. It is not plausible.
Sure there are scientists out there trying to make things fail, but there are also those trying to make fiction fact. That's proving a theory already developed. Scientists also use math to prove things.
The fact that you don't think that a sphere is even plausible shows how narrow minded you are. Just about anything is possible, you just have to figure out how to make it possible. There are just some things that are just out of reach of our minds, but it doesn't mean that we discount them and dismiss them as impossible.
-ARTHUR C. CLARKE
Yeah. I'm kinda tired too. Maybe tomorrow I'll explain the basic concept of the scientific method, hypothesis, and theory.
Try real hard to not conflate the words "plausible" and "possible", then reread my previous post.
eta: I like to think I'm open-minded. I just don't open my mind so far that my brain falls out.
I don't know if, it could be done. That doesn't mean it can't be done.
I can think of a few reasons that it's not likely to be done, even if, we know how it can be done. That's aside from the few problematic reasons that I find the concept not plausible.