How Destroying Mercury Would Help Humanity
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- čas přidán 10. 05. 2024
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The fact that the Dyson Sphere was actually inspired by a sci-fi novel goes to show that its not the knowledge that inspires ideas, its the imagination. To me that's absolutely beautiful.
Science fiction and imagination is in general what pushes scientific creations. Icarus story was the one that made people think about flying.
Same goes for cars, phones, virtual games, holograms, space...
I never thought about it that way but it’s so true. We don’t invent new things by sticking to what we know is possible, it’s trying to make the impossible possible.
+1
Science would be nothing without religion to ask the original questions
BETAVOLT
Astrum in 2014: Mercury is so interesting!
Astrum in 2024: Mercury is not necessary 💀
Yeah. Clickbait. Bandying about all these meaningless numbers is silly; dude don’t even start with the quadrillions, only comparisons are worth anything, and the simple multiplication and division to get there is not really educational.
@@michaeltrilliumwha
@@michaeltrillium i cant tell if you just dont like this guy or you just dont understand what hes talking about
@@colehealey2925
I am afraid, he has a point. In other words, the model with wich this video operatws to give estimates for building time feels way too simple. Gigasized engineering projects are not only determined by a few numbers, for example the dynamics of human society is involved, e.g. alĺ nations would be afraid of weaponisation of that tech..
@@jbruck6874 don't think you understand this Is a hypothetical sittuation. Not instructions on how to destroy Mercury. Of course he's going to get some things wrong.
The solution is not solar, wind, nor tidal... Its nuclear
Why can’t it be a combination of all sources?
Well, I certainly do agree that we need to be switching to nuclear, and getting liquid thorium reactors into mass adoption, but nuclear isn't the end all be all answer.
Fission is unrenewable, just much slower, so it'd just be kicking the can down the road.
Fusion is promising, and for all intents and purposes, is renewable- or as renewable as anything is in the universe. The only problem is that 1) cold fusion is a load of hoo-ha, and 2) the energy requirements to sustain small scale fusion is immense. Fusion, funnily enough, works on a economy of scale, so it's more energy efficient to let the sun do the fusing, and just collect the energy, rather than siphon off hydrogen, fuse it with energy hungry containment fields, and then collect the generated power.
In the end, fission is a needed stopgap, and fusion has some use cases, but in the long run, why reinvent the wheel, when there's a fully functional car right there? The sun already does everything we want, all we have to do is collect the power.
It is definitely a combination of all 4 although nuclear is cracked for sure absolutely S tier energy source shame russia fucked it up for everybody
@@johnnyramirez3717solar and nuclear take it or plow a field all day
Fusion is the future.
We just gonna ignore that nuclear can power earth for thousands of years?
Yes, because it is the worst possible option.
@@MrWeedWacky no, it is not
@@ignilc After more than 70 years of nuclear power, there is no country in the world that have an actual long term storage for the waste, and anywhere that waste is stored, it has been neglected and has caused massive pollution of the immediate area, Chernobyl and Fukushima have areas that are uninhabitable for centuries in the future. And no, the fact that Chernobyl was a faulty design is not an argument, because Fukushima was a modern and considered safe design, but exactly because nuclear power plants are made for profits, corners are cut, like in Fukushima, which is why that disaster happened, it was considered too expensive to move the backup generators to higher levels, so they were left in a place where they ended up flooded...
Anyone who thinks nuclear power is a good idea are deluding themselves.
Yes but it could also contaminate for thousands of years if there was a meltdown due to things like natural disasters (floods, earthquake, hurricanes, etc.) then you have to deal with cancer. Solar is very good if it was done right, and if we can achieve "solid state batteries" to replace lithium, combined with solar, that's a game changer.
recycling nuclear waste was a normal procedure up to the end of the 70 ties , they stopped it because it cost a little bit more . Recycling nuclear waste on and on reduces its radiation time enourmously ,from 100k years to 1000 or less . And we haven’t even talked about nuclear fusion . Sacrificing mercury is unnessecary and just stupid . Ignoring the gravitation cycles alone is ludicrous. And the whole thought train is just based on the economy has to grow constantly . That’s the first thing that’s got to go . The real incentive is stock market that does not give a damn about nothing and no one . Just personal profit . That will get us destroy earth and beyond . And a Dyson sphere is just expanding economy / profit .
What's interesting about Mercury, is that it rotates around it's axis so slowly that you can "outrun" the sunrise, as long as you move faster than ~11 km/h. So it might be possible to create a moving base that always stays in it's twilight, where the surface temperature is somewhat pleasant. (It goes from -173ºC on the night side to 427ºC on the day side.)
Dutch author Tais Teng actually wrote an excellent sci-fi novel about this idea (_400 Graden in de Schaduw_, or "400 Degrees in the Shadow"). I don't think it ever has been translated, but it's a big recommend if you ever are in the situation to read it.
It's a lot easier to build your base underground. If you have a few meters of regolith on top of you, there's hardly any temperature variation at all. Ditto for Luna, by the way. As a bonus, this also protects you from energetic particles (solar and cosmic). On Mars, temperature control isn't as important a concern (a reasonably well insulated building on the surface would stay pretty warm just from the people and equipment inside), but you'd still want to build underground for particle protection.
As a fellow dutch speaker, i will definitely check it out!
Kim Stanley Robinson also had a city called Terminator in his 1985 novel In Memory of Whiteness. It was pushed by the expansion of the tracks it rode on. It was also a setting in his 2012 novel 2312.
Make no mistake, when we build a dyson sphere no human will set foot on mercury. We will control the machines from mars.
That doesn't make sense in my head... Where is the "pleasant" location? Mercury has no atmosphere, it's not like the temperature "averages out" at the twilight boundary. You'd do a lot better with a stationary base since you still need to implement your own "averaging out" solution that stores thermal energy for later slower release. Maybe a large basin of water?
Interesting that nuclear isn’t mentioned. This would solve a lot of our energy problems.
I agree!
Nuclear must still be supplemented with fossil fuel production as it cannot respond quickly to changing load demands.
@@Hakuna_Frittata Agreed but it would cut down demand greatly. And for fossil, we should transition from coal to natural gas as it's so underutilized.
Except that man can’t be trusted with machinery, that can kill the environment and the people around it I E Fukushima
Nuclear is still a non-renewable, and as we travel to space nuclear will start to be something we send into the stars.
We need to utilise stuff we have in abundance.
I wonder if dismantling a planet within a solar system, part of an orchestral orbiting situation of several planets together, might become problematic, or result in strange changes in the solar system.
It absolutely would have ripple effects most likely to negatively affect us. The mindset that the sun’s energy is “wasted” just because we can’t fully exploit it for ourselves is ridiculous. The only reason the earth keeps earthing is because we can’t and shouldn’t
Similarly, would a giant metal sphere around the Sun not affect stuff? Maybe over insane amount of times, depending on the size and weight, but still.
Maybe you could offset the total mass of Mercury by a same mass dyson sphere, but the place would not be the same and the shape either...
Anyway, such tech is speculative so we'd be going blind. Engineers could get an idea but stuff would most likely present itself and make the plan wrong.
Sure, redistributing the mass of a planet wold have effect on orbital mechanics of the solar system, but remember, you've now got the power output of the entire Sun to help you deal with any negative consequences of that.
like introducing a new species to an area, there will always be consciences that will slap us in the face
@@shanepaynter5591 We are allowed to do what we wish to this solar system. No morally ridicolous dilemma will stop future humans shaping either the earth or the galaxy.
One issue I never see addressed in these types of videos ... increasing the amount of energy arriving at earth should upset the energy balance considerably. Directing near 100% of the sun's energy to earth, even if transformed into something other than sunlight, is still going have to go somewhere. We would have to be able to dramatically increase the amount of energy the earth sheds as well.
I think this is where humanity will try to tinker in turning energy back into physical mass. It is very energy consuming and quite unclear how to do it, but after all - it could solve resource problem and consume vast amount of energy we will get.
A lot of work can be moved off world if we are to the point of building a Dyson swarm. That means less power hunger industry on earth. Orbital factors and lunar product would be a first step since light lag to the moon is about a second which is perfectly fine for most activities.
A lot of work can be moved off world if we are to the point of building a Dyson swarm. That means less power hunger industry on earth. Orbital factors and lunar product would be a first step since light lag to the moon is about a second which is perfectly fine for most activities.
@@calluxdoaron1903 Surely entropy wouldn't allow this to be effetive
They're talking about mirrors, which means they can shutter them when they don't need them. The rest of the energy can be stored as potential energy. There's also a bigger danger, though. If something goes wrong with the setup, these energy relay drones could become unintended, concentrated energy weapons. The Earth can fit inside the Sun 1.3 million times. That's a lot of energy being made by something so enormous. Such directed energy could cause untold catastrophe.
It has to be a swarm in order to reorganize for optimization over the variable solar output over time AND in order to dodge solar outbursts and magnetic storms
Not to mention to be able to handle gravitational disruptions caused by larger planets in the system and due to the movements of stars themselves.
I think I've read somewhere an actual shell would be unstable.
So you'd need to use propulsion pretty much all the time which puts unbearable stresses on the enormous structure...
so yeah... a swarm it is
The Starlink and other satellite constellations are a solid first step.
yeah, an ongoing project built up over time, spacing adjusts as more cells are added.
also to avoid a total catastrophic failure, which is far less likely when you have independent nodes.
you made a mistake at 6:35. 1km² is 1million m². so 35000 people per 1km² would mean that each person would have 28 square meters, not 3 square centimeters
Even it is true ..It's impractical babe😂😂
That's a relief 😊
Imbaba إمبابة
8.28 km2
Population
1,465,875.
8280^2/1465875 = 47m2 / person ... they likely exceed 28m2/body in a lot of areas... probably not growing much wheat there nowadays.
Yeah i actually quit the video because of that. I just can’t trust a video that predicts the physical feasibility of the dyson sphere from someone who can’t convert units of measurement properly.
So the same as the Netherlands right now basically😂
6:38 How on earth did you get that 35k people per km2 means 1 person per 3 cm2? There are one MILLION square metres in a square kilometre. It's actually one person per 28.6 m2.
This video is a perfect example of why it was a mistake to let just anyone broadcast their thoughts.
I got 1 person per 300,000 cm squared in my head. That's the same as 30 metres squared right?
There are 148,000,000 square kilometers of land in the world. It will be 148,000,000x1,000,000=148,000,000,000,000 square metres. If this is divided by 8,000,000,000, it becomes 18,500 square meters per person. Human population size will peak before it reaches 11 billion people.
What he talks about a planet with 40 trillion people in 800 to 900 years with current population growth and that is just speculation. Unfortunately, many people think it increases because of births, but that is not correct. It peaked several years ago. The population is now increasing due to the fact that all people are living longer than ever and that all over the world. Also in the world's poorest country.
In the poor countries, the families with children have become a little richer and then they become smaller and the children can go to school because father and mother work. Unfortunately, western climate and energy politics will make it more expensive to live in the poor countries. So that families with children become large because everyone has to work for their survival.
seems legit@@Saabmann79
@@JooooooooooooshJeez, it was just likely an off-chance mistake, perhaps it should be you who shouldn’t be able to broadcast their thoughts eh?
Astrum: “a dyson sphere could be completed as little as 31 years”
Also my city builds a 12 story office building in 5 years
That’s IF humanity is so desperate for energy that we devote all of our resources into building a Dyson sphere
@@TherandomshitstormerCXVIIeven then. This would require full scale occupation of an extremely harsh planet, solving thousands of engineering problems, unprecedented manufacturing demands. We’d be lucky to create a mirror in 30 years
@@mememealsome you know humans we can create a starship in a week and a traditional mirror in half a day
@@mememealsome it is because we aren't unified, not in a sense that we have the same exact goals but we don't have the same exact vision for the future of our species. Most of the time the higher ups fight against each other for something personal and selfish, so the majority of the people below them have to do the dirty work without realizing that they were just being used for practically nothing.
One idea that I've thought of (and actually employed in Kerbal Space Program a few times) is to make a giant solar farm on the surface of Mercury and have a massive beam that converts the solar energy into microwaves and beam them to the Moon, then to Earth. A side-effect I could see with that is creating massive invisible beams of death in space. A wandering spacecraft that stumbled into the beam wouldn't have a very good time.
That wandering spacecraft would be like jiffy pop.
Yep. Because, unlike on movies, the light traveling through space cannot be seen.
Depends on the ship. You get one for black hole diving, you got nothing to worry about.
@@thecommenternobodycaresabout Microwaves aren’t actually visible to the human eye regardless so if you wanted to avoid them you would need to know exactly where they were and where they were pointing at all times.
wonder if that could slightly alter the orbits of the bodies
My question: what happens to all of the planets beyond the sphere with less or no sunlight (or solar particles) reaching them?
With mirrors, you can orient however many of them you want to redirect however much sunlight you want towards - or away from - anywhere in the solar system you want. Mars needs more light for terraforming? Task more mirrors to light it up. Want to cool down Venus for terraforming? Block sunlight from reaching it.
@@darthrainbowsWant to eradicate all life on Earth? Hack the Dyson sphere and direct all solar rays to Earth.
good question!
They become our "junk closet" of raw materials to be exploited when / as needed. Also, the mirror idea suggested by @darthrainbows could be used.
Guess
One of my favourite episodes of Startrek tng is called "Relics" and has a Dyson Sphere in the story. It's such a great episode. It's the one with Scotty (James Doohan) making an appearance.
Yup, I thought of that too; excellent episode
It's cool to see Alex covering more 'futurist' topics in his style. The optimist in space really suits him, and we need more of that.
Check out Isaac Arthur. He's been doing that for years.
@@GrandTourHTX I love Isaac's stuff. I've been watching him for years. These guys are top tier. This video from astrum reminded me of Isaac a little bit
6:36 thats quite the miscalculation man😂
i was looking for this comment 🤜
Yea he messed up and divided the number of people by the area, should of been are divided by number of people.
35,000 people per km2 isn't even that bad,
1 km2 is 1,000 m by 1,000 m so
1,000,000 m2.
1,000,000 m2 divided by 35,000 people is 28.6 m2 per person.
Taking square root of 28.6 m2 that's a boxed room 5.3 meters by 5.3 meters per person, much bigger than the studio I lived in, and some people never leave so I guess they'll be alright 😂.
@@dewsjievpdav6557 *Should have been. We all make mistakes. He should have triple checked the math in his video though.
One thing I rarely hear talked about is that in the case of a Dyson swarm, while having the panels be a thin as possible saves on weight, cost, etc it also decreases mass so much so that the orbit would be very energy intensive to maintain due to the pressure from the solar radiation.
Yeah I was wondering about this, we would basically create a fleet of solar sails. Plus I think that dimisnhing the heliosphere would make us a lot more vulnerable to interstellar radiation?
Also, if we start using a ton more energy on earth, thermodynamics tell us that we will generate a lot more heat. Which we already have a bit of a problem with. How would we get rid of that? Since convection and conduction don't work in a vacuum, radiation would be the only way. Massive heatsinks perhaps?
The handwaving in these situations is usually to say that the solar wind pressure exactly counter-acts the pull of gravity on those sails/mirrors, so they remain in place.
But you forgot to consider the asteroids, comets, Coronal Mass Ejections, solar flares, solar storms, gravity of planets, the disruption of orbit by a nearby passing star, fluctuations in temperature, possible material and component failures and the maintenance. I would suggest considering the trojan locations in the Earth's orbit. They are gravitationally stable and would require little adjustments over the years. We know the science of trojan asteroids in the orbit of Jupiter and the Lucy spacecraft is going to dive deeper for that matter, so that might help as well.
the solar flares are less of a problem than it would be on many other solar systems just because our star is less solar active than other stars but the others would be a hurdle to get over
Assuming that power consumption us directly equivalent to civilization progress is an exceptional example of "correlation is not causation."
The fundamental premises in this video are insane. We need more energy for first world needs for consumption (everything is fine, let's keep going just as we are!). Ethics comes into destroying a space rock, not the fact that polluting the earth at this rate for another 150 years will be catastrophic for all life on earth. No worries re food, water, clean air, sanitation, quality of life, ending wars, etc. Yes I know this is a "thought experiment", but it is still sick at its root.
I would think a slight wrinkle in the plan is the proportions of needed materials. nuclear transmutation is pretty energy intensive and is going to affect your timing a fair bit.
That and I’m pretty sure removing mercury could render earth uninhabitable due to unforeseen planetary interactions thrusting us out or something at us.
Only an alien civilisation in a Hollywood movie can build a Dyson Sphere.
Because in reality, any civilisation attempting it would be too stupid to exist.
@@Chris.Davies Yes, I think most people know that. It's just thought experiments. Like the space elevator. People are just talking about the engineering. Not the practicality.
@@Chris.Davies Using all energy available to you is not stupid at all. A Dyson Sphere will probably never be just one mega-structure but rather the collected effects of billions and billions of solar panels and mirrors. We have solar panels on Earth and in orbit right now. The tiny amount of light they convert to usable energy and waste heat is already the start of a Dyson Swarm/Sphere. If people continue to explore space and use solar energy then more tiny pieces will be added. It might take a long time but sooner or later a civilization like that will use 100% of their sun's output.
@@Chris.Davies Why is using all of the energy sources available to you stupid?
And the way Dyson Sphere Program implemented the Dyson Swarm is pretty feasible I imagine. Though, instead of shooting single use mirrors into orbit, we want to add some boosters with fuel to them so we can maybe repair or at least aim them at a receiver?
Pretty sure the math on the ammout of space each person gets with 40 trillion people is wrong, by my estimate each person gets ~29 square meters to themselves.
1square km = 1million square meters, so yeah.
35000 people per km^2 is 1 person per 285714 cm^2 !!! Over 95000 times more than what he said ! The guy can't do simple math... 285714 cm^2 which is 28,57 m^2. One person every 28,5 m^2 ! Not one person per 3 cm^2 !!! LMAO ! 95000 times more space per person !!!
And the whole thinking behind this "40 trillion people" idea is also incredibly dumb.
@@vaderz000 well, depends on how additional commodities are dealt with. It is indeed very stretched, but if the entire Earth becomes what is basically a hive city from WH40k (perhaps with better resource management), it could be achieved. These are just numbers though, and the maximum limit.
@@UbiMortus those numbers make no sense and are completely detached from reality of how demographics and geography of populations work, even without considering environmental and resources concerns. It simply makes no sense to put that on the video.
This channel always gives me the "reading a bedtime story" vibe. Thank you for another fantastic upload 😀
One thing about oil is that we don’t burn it all. Oil is the base of many chemical products, which are bit harder to build from sunlight or wind.
We're much closer to nuclear fusion than a dyson sphere / swarm
That's what we're hearing since the 70's. I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. A workable science project? No problem. Commercial feasibility to represent a viable alternative to even fission? Within our lifetimes? Pipe dream...
It's just a rumors it's impractical 😂😂
@@dominic.h.3363What about the recent advances at the National Laboratory in California? They've repeated efficient fusion at least 5 times last year.
@@poetryflynn3712 Like I said, science project, no problem. Commercial feasibility is a whole different domain. You have to sustain it, not "repeat" it. Being able to turn the ignition on at which point the engine starts running and immediately stalls is a far cry away from driving a car.
@@dominic.h.3363 That's what I thought too, but since we've now achieved ignition, I think it's possible within my lifetime. I might be like 80 tho by the time it works out
Nuclear is enough for our energy needs. It is already proven safe and highly effective.
Fission fuel will run out in 50-100 years if used to satisfy most of the energy consumption of people on Earth.
That's only part of the problem. We still need oil. We need it to refine our metals, to make all the things we love and depend on. That oil has to be extracted, and then spent. We need oil for our pharmaceuticals, our clothes, our space ventures, and thousands of other things. Nuclear can't replace that.
@@Daniel_P116it could replace lots of those things, also other materials can be used than oil for most things, not just nuclear, its just better as a power source.
@Daniel_P116 even just reducing the NEED for oil, thus reducing or eliminating the need to drill for it, would be a win.
I asked a super advanced alien about Dyson spheres. He laughed so hard. Eventually he told me, you are thinking in your frame of reference, we don't build giant balls around stars.
You are like a guy from 1850 imagining telegraphs and trains in space
Worth adding that building a Dyson Sphere is impossible as the sphere would collapse. The material at the equator (assuming the sphere rotates with the sun) would stay in place, but as soon as the material is "north" or "south" of the equator, it's subject to gravitational forces pulling it toward the center. And the material at the poles of the star are just, somehow, supposed to magically float in space? I don't see how any material made from atomic matter would hold itself over the star in such a position and I don't see how firing some kind of thruster continuously would be worth it. So the only "Dyson Sphere" anyone or anything could build, would be a larger series of "Dyson Rings", narrow bands which would revolve around the sun. Also managing their positions would be physically challenging as you'd want thin material to reduce the cost, but applying force to a very thin material also requires incredible precision. And you'd need to apply forces to it often because the orbits of planets, the motion of the star through the galaxy and other events do exert forces on the rings and those forces in turn will move the rings which means they can collide with each other.
Speaking simply on the point of thrusters firing to keep the segments in place, the amount of radiant energy from the sun would more than offset whatever we spent to fire said thrusters (even if they're ionic plasma thrusters that are way better than what we have today).
I think there are other concerns here. The Dyson's Sphere models presented here are variants on the original theory. Thus, I wouldn't even call them true or factual Dyson's Spheres. The way that a real one would work is substantially further way from the sun (say close to Mars' orbit from the sun) and would not run afoul of the problems you're mentioning. Instead, it would encounter completely different ones like the matter necessary to create that would essentially be worth millions of Earths in terms of surface area. So, we fix one problem and create another by using one that fits the general parameters of Dyson's theory.
That said, I don't know that we necessarily need to do the variants or the real thing. I think much smaller objects capable of harnessing radiant energy from the sun would be relatively smart from both economics and time perspectives. Also, in this case, ROI (return on investment).
Forget Dyson sphere. Just build two more earth's.
An interesting thought explored a little. Well done on the video creation :)
The only practical part of all of this that I see for the current future is to be using the mirrors for setting up industry and foundries on the moon. That gets the energy waste out of the earths biosphere so we can preserve more of the food producing ecology for a while. It really means beginning the transition to a space dwelling species with the early inhabitants of those space metal can dwelling being miners digging up the moon and dragging in asteroids to melt down. Transporting any of those building materials off Earth just isn't practical. But sending additional energy/materials extracted from the sun, moon and asteroids down to earth isn't that difficult.
>
Moon -> mining -> energy and space craft -> access to more distant resources -> ...
Related to Dyson spheres are ringworlds at 1AU. Plenty of space but requires some super strong materials we don’t have yet
A correction, if I may:
At 5:04, the second term in the equation is identified by the narrator as "the sun's circular area as it cuts through space". But this is instead the circular area of Earth. And the number shown (1.1 x 10^14 m^2) is indeed the circular area of the Earth.
And since this equation is intended to show the amount of solar energy that hits the Earth (in the absence of a Dyson Sphere), it is indeed the circular area of the Earth that matters, not the circular area of the sun.
Dyson Sphere... a pipe dream.
Its nonsense, lets reach Proxima Centaury first.
So sick of hearing about it tbh. Really rather see these CZcamsrs talk about realistic things.
@@mrwolsy3696 Maybe let's not. Voyager 2 hasn't even reached the theoretical location of the Oort Cloud, let alone the orbit of another star.
Judging a civilization by how much energy it uses seems like a very flawed metric. Wouldn't an advanced civilization be more efficient, and need less source energy to fuel various technologies? These plans seem to be all brute force and no finesse.
Great insight
Not how energy works unfortunately, it's referring to the ability to move more people more places and faster. Like the cosmos
@@greyarea3804 thank you!
Yes! We currently judge ‘advancement’ based on our Ego driven logic, which is deeply flawed. We have free energy, Tesla proved that. Just currently we let big corps control stuff they shouldn’t. When we evolve past capitalism, towards cooperation built on unity then we will find what’s has already been available to us. Free energy.
actually advanced societys would learn to be happyy without abssurd amount of energy
150 years of oil reserves? When I was a kid they told us we'd be out in 1982.
So, do we have a Illudium Q-36 modulator to blow Mercury away?
Given that the barycentre of the solar system is well above the surface of the sun, any major structure orbiting the sun will have to have positioning thrusters to avoid sliding into the sun. This idea was dealt with in the book Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven back in the 1970's.
Thats why it would be a swarm. We aint building a structure that falls into the sun if a thruster breaks.
@@egggge4752 That's why there's redundancy. For any megastructure, including swarms, hundreds, if not thousands of thrusters would be necessary on each structure to keep a stable orbit.
@@davidmilne4936 or hear me out... we build a swarm thats really cheap and has no redundancy since when a single satellite breaks and falls into the sun... we can just replace it.
The structure will orbit the barycentre as all the other objects in the Solar System do. Do planets need thrusters?
Working and living in space is already incredibly tough, but imagine living and working on a dyson swarm in close orbit of the sun. If it's even possible to send human workers there(ignoring robots), it'd probably be the single most dangerous job we've invented yet.
Do we have radiation shielding tech that could protect permanent living quarters that close to the sun?
Not now, but it's not inconceivable that it would exist in 100 years. A proposed q drive, not a great name, you can find it online is a design that harvests energy from the solar wind, and also happens to provide radiation shielding in the process, and that ignoring advancements in material science. You can also use it to go quite fast, concentrating the kinetic energy of a spacecraft into a smaller mass, but that's a whole other beast. Keep in mind, this is a project undertaken by a society that can already exist throughout the solar system, so it's some time in the future.
RELEASE THE DRONES!
??? You forgot that we can build robots???
@@egggge4752 Yeah because we currently use robots to perform all the dangerous jobs on earth right now..
Humans will not be needed.
Enjoy the time you have.
Removal of Mercury could change the orbit of the planets, causing a catastrophic inward migration or something stranger. Mining asteroids with an attached space-based factory would pose less of a threat & could be aimed at any temporary, near-Earth satellites to start.
-1st complete the technology for a mobile space-based factory. Probably 10 years to create & use, with another 40 years to perfect. An investment of at least 3 factories to start, should be easy on the Earth's resources but with an insane price-tag.
-2nd target asteroids that are in Mercury's LaGrange points or cross it's orbit. Give the factories up to 5 years to get into location. Up to 1 year to get the collector into place. Up to 1 year to start producing.
-3rd target any additional material further out up to Jupiter's LaGrange points, if more mass is needed.
-4th allow time for the object to migrate into position. (up to 5 years once made)
We'd have something usable in 16 years with a steady increase by the 45th. At any point, the technology could be scaled up. I don't think we'd get to 6 percent the mass of the Earth, though. I don't know the numbers, but I think we would need to poach some of Saturn & Jupiter's moons for that. Maybe two-hundred to five-hundred years for full completion, but no orbit-changing craziness.
the fact that the sponsors logo itself is supposed to be a dyson sphere frame just fits with this topic
if we just floated a curved mirror out between us and the sun, we could catch a fraction of the sun's energy & focus it back towards Earth where we could get at it with an orbital battery system... it's as easy as reflecting it, we don't need to transfer the energy or get it at the source, just reflect the beam where we need it (as Alex explained as soon as I unpaused the video from writing this comment lol!) I was right there with you man
Now I'm relying on an A Level physics class from 25 years ago, that I didn't totally understand at the time, but....
Our physics teacher was into his star Trek, and when Scotty got stuck in the Dyson sphere, he decided to work us through the gravitational physics.
About 2 whiteboards full of calculations later, he came to the conclusion that the gravitational centre of a Dyson sphere would be in the centre of the sphere.... IE, the core of the star, which would be a bit problematic if you were planning on living and maintaining an atmosphere on the sphere's inner surface.
Definitely need a spin to it, but that would be problematic as well in the shape of a sphere. Honestly, in terms of 'Dyson' type constructs, a swarm or 'Halo ring' seems most logical especially for a possibly live-able environment - minus the whole life wiping purge lol
Plot twist: black holes are Dyson spheres, we just don't recognize the tech.
I read “Orbitsville” where a Dyson sphere was discovered. It was a complete shell around the sun. Iain Banks had The Culture Habitats which was a narrow circular strip.
Haven't read that one, how'd they manage the heat distribution?
I’ve been watching your videos for years and just realized I wasn’t even subbed. Love everything you put out man. Much love and respect to you
How about, before we build the Dyson swarm, we build a swarm of solar collectors that equal the Earth's total input of energy? That would essentially enable a whole lot of cool stuff, and we could always upgrade to a full Dyson swarm gradually.
Explain it to me. How do you get the energy the dyson sphere collects? It looks pretty detached to me. I really don't know how it'll send the energy from the dyson sphere orbiting the sun back to earth.
lasers or probably microwaves... something like that.
Gremlins. Or goblins. Or gnomes. Or ghosts. Or Gods. Most likely one of those types of fantasy G creatures.
@@MegaHarko so in short and to over simplify it to the point that it's understandable but technically wrong... A dyson sphere is just a magnifying glass concentrating the sun to a battery on earth?
@@RadzKiram
With some detours, but yes.
Also: Earth doesn't need to be the sole receiver. You could build a ship with a solarsail and aim at that with your swarm to accelerate it. (in that case actual mirrors would suffice if we're going a low-tech route).
The Dyson sphere assumes people or benefactors would live on the structures rings orbiting the sun around, therefore using locally that energy gathered.
I notice that discussions of dismantling Mercury with optimistic timescales like 31 years never account for the heat energy inside Mercury's core. It would take a megastructure project of its own to dissipate the heat of a 2000 degree K core. Unaided that would take well over a billion years presuming we stripped the core bare and left it 'naked' to radiate.
Would be better to use that energy to propel mercury across the galaxy before the sun eats it, so we've got millions of years to figure it out.
I saw another video on making a Dyson sphere and it was the same as what you explained, seems like this solution for building it is very promising.
That’s gonna take a LONGGGGG extension cable! 😅
How do you wirelessly transmit power across the solar system? If using mirrors, how do you cope with the earth spinning? How do you prevent global warming when reflecting more of the suns energy at the earth? We already have light focusing solar farms on earth, and they're not very popular. How do you mine mercury without changing its orbital properties? Do we need to accelerate mercurys orbit, to prevent it falling into the sun as we mine it? What will happen to the orbit of venus if mercury disappears? What happens if we get a sun-grazing comet pass by? Who would own the dyson sphere? The US? China? Elon?
Really good questions exactly my thoughts too. Gobbling up mercury may not be such a wise idea. Also I wonder how the sunlight will work on earth and life in general after the swarms engulfing the whole star.
Microwaves or lasers. Something really dangerous if it hit you.
This is one of my favorite channels!
Can we get a video about the current leaps on tokamak fusion reactors? I would love to get the update from you, and it is related to the energy crisis.
Once you solve fusion wouldn't it be more economical to mine the gas giants and run fusion plants where you need them?
It depends. If we used just planets and gas giants for nuclear reactors, then we'd be missing out on 99.86% of the solar systems mass by not utilizing the sun. It would likely be better to utilize those planetary materials for habitats, rather than using it on energy production.
Wouldn't each subsequent placement of solar panels in orbit of the sun slowly over time make the outer solar system colder and darker than it already is? It seems doing so would make it harder to colonise in the future.
We could move the mirrors in any configuration, just direct some at any given planet
Have you tried the Dyson Sphere Project PC game. Yes its a game, but the Dyson swarm that is created towards the end of the game, gives some idea of the immense complexity of such a project.
Dyson sphere program**
And yes it is an awesome game! For anyone that liked factorio this is a must play.
Yeah, gradual would be the way, definitely a long-term project. The closer you can get to the sun the better because it dramatically reduces the material needed, but ideally we'd want Earth within the sphere because that's a big population center. I think the population estimates for Dyson spheres are probably over-inflated, a lot of the space would be taken up maintenance and power systems. Tidal disruptions are something of a problem though, planets inside the sphere might create tidal forces, so the sphere itself would have to flex. And idk about outer planets like Jupiter, would they exert enough force to worry about a little? Another thing: solar eruptions - seems like they would wreak havoc on Dyson spheres, and their orbit the more so (depending on star type). I think it's safe to say that a Dyson sphere would be impossible for a binary star system for similar tidal reasons? Likely a neutron star would be the best candidate for a Dyson sphere? Basically if complete Dyson spheres exist we would never actually see them though, right? Fascinating that Mercury has enough material for an Earth-range sphere.
It would be a swarm built by remote controlled robots. The panels would beam the energy as lasers to a base on the moon.
At one time, there were fears that the increasing numbers of horses in New York city would lead to a manure crusis. Then cars happened.
The thought that the requisite centuries would go by to consume our fossil fuels, and no replacement for that energy generation process would naturally occur is bananas.
Necessity is the mother of invention, but human nature is the muse.
Crazy how Nuclear Energy/Fusion Energy was completely ignored in the intro.
Especially because that's how the sun makes its energy. Forget Dyson things around the sun, build an own spaceborne fusion reactor and build the Dyson things around that.
The entire debate over future energy sources has to ignore nuclear, because it is obviously the best option.
Personally. I think the most advanced societies just chilled around camp fires at night and live as simply as possible
I love the use of Brilliant in this video. An actual good sponsor utilization
Not really, since that course uses flawed maths and ridiculous demographic projections
13:50 do we need that much matter? Also they should leave at least a pebble or like 1-10 kilometres of mercury and put a light on it to earth so you can still kinda see it.
15:07 the brilliant logo kinda looks like that one dyson swarm/sphere hybrid with the connected segments.
I think it would also be interesting if you discuss if like all alien civilisations are most likely to use the same orbit configurations for dyson swarms. I think it’d be cool if you explained what dyson swarm or sphere would work the best for each star or something. Maybe you could factor in overpopulation but I also really likes this video.
In the first 30 seconds of this video it is almost as if the author has never heard the word nuclear
😂😂😂
Nuclear has been plagued by an odd stigma in our culture, it's like people are going 'oh no what are we going to do about this energy crisis' while looking around the nuclear power plant right in front of them. It's almost like they don't want to acknowledge that there's solutions that don't require cutting back resources and mobility for the general population...
He also conflates fossil fuels as a source with the TOTAL energy usage of humanity, all sources together. It fucks up his maths
And assuming a perpetual 1% population growth rate is Mathlusian nonsense. Earths population is already forecast to start precipitously declining by end the century
Dyson Sphere? More like Dyson Smear 😅
Or the champion like Mike Dyson 😅😅
Great video like always. You're voice is very pleasant to listen on such a fascinating thing to talk about
How can we efficiently transmit energy from Dyson spheres to Earth? Is a wireless approach feasible, or should we consider a concept akin to a celestial umbilical cord, connecting the sun to Earth through a tethered system?
Rather than a Dyson Sphere, a Ring World would be technically easier, and use far less material.
The math (never 'maths') would be easier too.
Best sci-fi novel ever written!
Sure if you could get some unobtanium. (And prevent it from drifting)
Otherwise it's a nogo. That's why, aside from scifi, Dyson's concept is a swarm and not an actual sphere.
No. It would collapse since the gravitational forces of the other planets would pull it in dufferent directions. A ring world only works if:
- asteroids didnt exist
- only the sun and the ringworld were in the system
-you could make the entire thing out of graphite
@@egggge4752 Graphene is still orders of magnitude too weak for a ringworld. You're better off spamming billions of O'Neill or McKendree cylinders instead.
"Math" is the preferred term in the United States and Canada. "Maths" is the preferred term in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and other English-speaking places.
'Magnifying glasses in space mining' is a topic I'd like to see and hear about. Is Alex up for the research challenge?
Something that's rarely mentioned, which we need to consider is splitting into two mercurial shells, or swarms. Two hemispheric shells that collect the output from above and below the ecliptic, while leaving that plane clear to allow light to humanity. So much of the sun's light simply heads off into space, but people always add "Blocks light from getting to Earth" when the reality is that we could easily avoid placing blocking elements on a single thin plane.
Maintaining the sphere given collisions of extremely fast-moving matter in space as well as effects from variations in solar weather should be taken into account and it would be cool to see a video addressing these issues to see how much of a problem such factors would present
It would be interesting to see, but also we would need eventually practical tests to determine if our assumptions are true (the royal "we" rather than specific individuals in these comments). It would answer whether or not gravity due to the Sun's mass would work in counterbalance to the solar pressures of solar wind.
I'm not really as sold on the idea not due to its novel nature. (TNG covered what a Dyson's Sphere is in "Relics" in season 7) The concern for me is that we should probably, as a society, stick closer to earth in terms of how we get our energy (like putting something at a La Grange point). It would be much more feasible from an economics perspective and from a timeline perspective.
Regardless of whether this is a Dyson sphere, solar mirror, or some sort of semi-transparent filter between us and the sun, there is a common threat for all of them: Asteroids and mobile objects in our solar system. So whatever solution we come up with has to be resilient, resistant, or impervious to that shared threat. That is, after economic concerns, the biggest hurdle to address.
31 Years, an i thought Isaac Arthur is optimistic....
Noone talks about if and how much a Dyson Sphere or swarm would affect space weather and the solar wind. Would it shrink the heliopause radius? Would that affect the objects around that radius? And so on!!
Who cares when you have the power of a star on tap? Literally enough power to sterilize every planet in the galaxy if converted into a Nicholl-Dyson beam. If you have a problem you can make a solution if you control that much power.
The weaker the heliosphere and solar radiation, the better for space colonisation. In case of a swarm the impact would be minimal anyways and sphere isnt possible since it would collapse in on itself.
@@egggge4752 wouldn't the increased cosmic rays coming from interstellar space be a hazard?
@@1cool but they are decreased? You didnt understand? You think we are reflecting the sun just to earth? No the swarm sends a laser bundle to a collection station on earth.
@@egggge4752 sorry for the confusion, i meant that with the heliosphere decreased, the radiation from other stars in the galaxy and other events (black holes, supernovae) might increase and be harmful to life.
The "solar energy we received from the sun per year would cover our need" actually ignored a lot of energy required we as a K-0.7 civ currently took as granted. Like maintaining the weather system.
In short, IF we make use of those energy for power we WILL destroy our eco system. People will say "But that's a lot of power and we're so small in scale", I bet people said the same thing back when we burn coal and oil for power "The coal is dirty and produce black smoke? Oh but we are so small in scale."
Man, knowing that a beginning towards type 2 civilisation could be obtained within my lifetime is crazy
Did I just watch a sponsor seamlessly integrated into a video? That just blew my mind right there!
It was the best advert for them I've seen.
Interesting stuff, small error: 35000 people per square kilometres would be more than 25 sqm per person.
Very fat people
I think the most practical way to perform this megaproject would be to do as the story did and build habitats that lock together to form the dyson sphere
There was an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation where they found a Dyson Sphere. It turned out that it was abandoned because the star it surrounded wasnt stable. The same would happen with our star as solar flares and other solar phenomena would wreak havoc on society as there would be no way to avoid it. Its still really interesting, but it couldnt work without either artificially stabilizing a star, or finding one that wont occasionally cause a mass extinction.
For anyone struggling to understand some of the numbers and comparisons, just remember that when anything is measured by a number times a power of 10, the exponent is the number of zeroes in the actual number.
People who say building a dyson sphere is even remotely possible can't comprehend the size of our sun.
When ambition becomes a delusion, yes. I can't understand that they don't see it. Destroying Mercury? Colonizing Mars? These people are looking for trouble, not solutions. Can't focus on first making this planet better, but instead using up precious resources to feed their ego as they destroy habitats for their materials and fuels. Killing wildlife in the process. Why not take care of hungry people first so we can have better workforce and a healthier society? Why not helping out third world countries first and get everyone educated so we can have more things done? Empowering and taking care of 8b people is much more possible than creating that Dyson sphere.
Right it would take 100's of years
Mercury's disappearance (entirely mined) would be a catastrophic event, even over 425,000yrs. Asteroids instead.
Nuclear: “Am I a fuxking joke to you?”
We need more nuclear power in order to save the "energy crisis". Uranium, but better yet, Thorium based.
True but dyson swarm cooler + more research into robotics, heatproofing and solar radiation.
Sure, when it's economic (again?). In the meantime we should optimise (coincidentally economically & ethically) by maximising solar, wind, geothermal and interconnectors. Fill the little gaps with Throrium MSRs or whatever when they finally pop up.
7:35 Why does that graph ignore the huge dropoff in growth rate that we are currently seeing. They just act like it is a blip rather than a trend
To me, the hardest part of the dyson sphere/swarm is not setting up the shell, but getting the energy out. Do you use lasers, batteries, mirrors, etc?
Windmills, Solar Panels - how much fossil fuel energy to manufacture?
Soooo ... Dyson Sphere?
Barkley: "No problem, I'll tell you how to build it!"
I wouldn't want to be anywhere near the Dyson Sphere when the sub starts expanding into a red giant. lol
pushing a plough all day in an agrarian society sounds relatively peaceful. the older i get the more ok i am with slowing down and enjoying nature. might be good to have a multi-pronged approach to this challenge... one that involves us using less energy for frivolous things like all you can eat buffets, energy drinks, using ai to create silly memes on social media, driving an hour one way to go to a big box store to buy consumer electronics that will break within a year, mining metals to create a pair of cheap pliers that get shipped across the world and sold for $2, etc. north america has kind of lost the plot a bit, and europe is only doing a bit better it seems
CZcams has made watching these videos almost unpalatable. For a relatively short video, I’m at five commercials, one of which was 2 1/2 minutes long. It’s also two ads now vs. one for each ad stop.
I always let ads run for channels I’m subscribed to, but this is ridiculous. I get it - it’s free content for me but something has to pay the bill. But I’m not going to premium - can’t afford one more damn thing.
The greed here is unbelievable.
I think there is a good video on why CZcams and doing this, since they kinda don't have a choice. I think problem of CZcams is not making people pay for their service - they are just doing a poor job in converting their program.
I can't remember the link or name of that video, but basically the point is something like this: advertisement on youtube never really gave enough money it, but what did give them are investors. Investors were more then happy to invest in youtube with their future of expanding user count which later would give profit, and to make sure as many people use youtube as possible, it was made free.
But recently, as many other IT companies they reached market saturation - there are almost no more users to gain, which means no further growth and no more investor money based on that, so they MUST start gaining money from the users themselves, and subscription is kinda the best solution, since ads give very little money. And to make people more likely to buy CZcams premium, they add more and more adds so people buy it to not see them. A single subscription user gives like tens or hundreds timmes more money to a company than a user that watches adds all the time
I see no problem in CZcams wanting to have a money for their work, isn't Brilliant working like that? It may be not Briliant, bust some other similar thing and it does fine. The problem is that CZcams does very poor job of making people like the subscription. The should be adding different levels of subscription for different cost, because like many people don't use CZcams music, or feature of downloading videos, so they could have bought a cheaper subscription without them if such existed.
All in all, in my opinion we should not be hating on CZcams turning their service into subscription based, what we should be pointing out is their poor efforts and job in doing so, there is no way CZcams or any service like this to stay afloat by being free, while not becoming unusable because of amount of adds to compensate it.
One thing about harvesting energy from space is the problem of send it down to Earth surface where we live. We may as well build Dyson Swarm with O'Neill Cylinders as its components. No need for intricate transmission system.
1:00 *AHEM* Nuclear basically a miny star. They can power whole city's and if there well maintained they a green and are very safe.
Small issue- I think you meant 1 person per 30 meters squared, 3 cm^2 is impossibly small even for one person lol
yeah there‘s something completely off with his numbers. the wikipedia article about population density of the earth says there are already 16 people per km² when you include all waters. it rises to 58 people per km² if you only take land into account. if you multiply by 5000 you get 290.000 people per km² but since there are 1 million m² in 1 km², there is still about 3,45m² left per person.
35000 people per km2 equals 0.035 people per m2, that is, about 30m2 per person.
1km = 1000m
But
1km2 = 1000000m2 not 1000m2
Tried a Dyson vacuum cleaner on Mercury, but sadly it melted.
Aw, poor vacuum. 😢 Sorry your purchaser was unaware that parts of Mercury are really freaking hot.
The fact that mercury could be disassembled in 31 years is mind blowing to me.
It couldn't. That's pure fantasy maths right there.
At 11:44, you mentioned that getting material out of Mercury's gravity well is very energy intensive.
But that is not the case with orbital rings. Isaac Arthur did a video explaining how orbital rings are the most efficient interplanetary transportation system.
Whenever I see videos about Dyson spheres I never hear people talk about the environmental effects it would have on the planet of we blocked out that much of the light from reaching the planet
Yes! Thank you! I've been saying this forever!
Earth only receives one billionth of the suns light. If we actually did enclose the entire sun in a solid sphere of solar panels, we could probably afford to convert one billionth of that energy back into light and point it at the earth.
If we had a smaller Dyson swarm blocking, say, half of the sun's light, we should have the technology to build an Earth-sized space mirror reflecting sunlight towards Earth, doubling the light we receive back up to full.
@@patrickskelly8517 you can't match the nuances of how the sunlight affects the earth by just pointing a reflected light
@@patrickskelly8517 With a swarm, you could just position the collector satellites so they leave open a corridor for natural sunlight to reach Earth. Since the Earth only receives one billionth of the sun's total energy, your swarm could get all the way to 99.999999% complete before the amount of energy Earth receives gets decreased at all.
We wouldn't need to block any of the light reaching the planet. You just position the orbits of your collector satellites so that none of them get in the way of the 1 billionth share of sunlight that reaches the Earth naturally. And instead of pushing all the way to a 100% swarm, you just stop at whatever density of swarm your current computer technology can handle calculating the needed orbital arrangements for, and expanding only as your computer technology advances, and your populaltion needs. Even a 10% Dyson Swarm gives you a vast amount of energy to play with.
I wonder why this idea of the possibility of a dyson sphere persists?
Surely, in a solar system awash with asteroids etc , any construction on this scale would be quickly reduced to space junk in a chain reaction!
We do not live in such a solar system and these would be statites, not satellites and not in orbit so if they are damaged they would just fall into the Sun. No chain reaction is possible.
A dyson swarm. Basically millions of satallites with solar panels or mirrors. They would have a distance of 10000 km to eachother and could move out of the way individually if an asteroid is detected. Idk why astrum keeps saying dyson sphere. Kinda silly.
@@egggge4752 is it reallyt realistic to keep a swarm of such magnitude fuelled?
@@dougal445 they fuel themselfs? They have solar panels on them? And they orbit the sun? How do you think current rovers and satellites work? Did we send people up to mars to fuel the mars rover? Cmon man.
We don't have a power problem, we have a storage problem.
The best thing to focus on is the use of batteries and how to be able to change those out in a fast and economical way
Mercury: AND I TOOK THAT PERSONALLY
Things that crossed my mind during the video.
1) Humanity could, at some point, start mining asteroids which can be rich in materials and provide a boost for the construction of the Sphere.
2) Humanity has been building stuff over generations since forever. Pyramids, cathedrals, all those were done well after the death of those who started it. Take a look at the Sagrada Familia, I believe it's been ongoing for nearly 150 years. We're not talking of a project for our own life. We're dealing with a Humanity project.
Given that 90% of our systems material is the sun we would never have enough accessible material in system to build the sphere.
3) Popular assumptions of humanity are often misguided or wrong. For example, we don't know where "oil" comes from, the process that produces it, or how much there actually is. It does seem inevitable to be exhausted some day, but the Earth itself won't last forever, either. It is not possible, today, to predict the day we run out of oil any more than it is possible to predict the day the Earth gets destroyed.
@@NavyVet4955
A) not true
B) Even if: So what? Even a partial sphere (a swarm actually) could bring us a long way...
@@MegaHarko 😂 love the "not true" yet supplied zero rebuttal. I was off on the amount of the solar systems material is tied up in the sun, its 99.86%. Easy thing to get wrong as I haven't looked up the numbers in some years. To address the second part of your response it matters because the energy and time required to sweep up the crumbs in the system and break every planet not the earth for a partial sphere will never be available.
@@NavyVet4955
Imagine a balloon. Fill it with a good amount of water. You know as one does in the summer to bother other people :)
But don't throw it. let the water out, weigh it and weigh the mass of the balloon.
Now compare those two.
You just need a teeny tiny fraction of mass to surround something with a rather thin shell.
Love this topic!
My favourite dyson related concept is using thin mirrors close to the sun, so instead of orbiting the solar pressure keeps them aloft.
Great, we would never have to worry about mercury being in retrograde again