Dyson Sphere: The Megaproject that Requires an Entire Solar System...
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- čas přidán 22. 04. 2020
- I've wanted to make a video about these things since the 90s when I first saw Star Trek TNG episode Relics. I hope this video does them justice. Enjoy.
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THE COFFEE HAS BEEN SIPPED
(And there folks, is the weirdest Adobe Premiere export error I have ever seen. Apologies. No subliminal messages intended #sponsored by #nescafe #notreally)
... must ... sip ... coffee.
Aww, come on. I really, _really_ wanted it to be a subliminal message. Now you've gone and burst my quarantine bubble. Thanks Simon. 🙄
Thought I was going crazy, on an unrelated note I'm going to make a coffee :D
I was wondering why there was a weird audio doubling.
All praise HYPNOTOAD!!
THE COFFEE HAS BEEN SIPPED- I thought I was having a stroke for a second there....
I had to check my headphones 😂
Ya what the was going on lol. And that beeping noise just before it lol
As soon as I heard it I had to make sure I wasn't the only one. Haha
Im high as all get out and this made me panic!
Die schönsten Blumen wachsen aus Schlamm, die schönsten Menschen sind oft Abschaum.
Started playing "Dyson Sphere Program" today. I remembered this video, and just had to come back to it to remind myself. Still a great video as always.
"The coffee has been sipped"
The Spiffing Brit Disliked That
TEA TIME
How ironic
I think that we can all agree that all the tea goes into the sea.
@@Torresgamingchannel Thats an easy way to get yourself smited
@@DetectiveMekovawell, to be fair it did help get a point across to the damn British during colonial times. Of course they used the solid “plate” or “bar” form that you would break pieces off of and were extremely expensive so tossing off an amount worth up to multiple millions of modern day usd, I’d say that they were rightfully pissed
"so what do you need to build a Dyson Sphere then?"
"... Mercury"
"Oh, that's a strange element to bui..."
"The Planet."
"Oh."
Get a 10mm glock and put it in a roni carbine kit lol that would be a blaster use them copper wadcutters for bear stopping lol i think lehigh make them they have near. 44 mag power well from a 2 inch barrel the. 44 from say a marlin or something is beastmode under 300m its got similar if nit more power than some full rifle rounds i think a 45.70 marlin with a little red dot on it would still be a good fighting rifle ud be able to literally blow walls ect apart or whatever barriers ur opponents are behind just use extreme penatrators or anything brass or copper amd have a 4 round short shotgun with buck shot and a. 22 magnum revolver 4inch barrel and a 10 round cylinder they aint cheap and normally made in Germany i prefere rifles anyway a 6.5 creedmore bolt action and a high capacity carbine in 223 would do u just need range and thats easy if your alert
weird science the 2nd dude wtf how is this relevant to anything
@@leojensen9270 it isnt but u read it and now you know 😂
@@weirdsciencethe2nd205 read it and don't have a damn clue what you are talking about. and i doubt any 44 or 10mm gun could go through good cover more like solid walls.
And for the love of all that is unholy use punctuation marks.
If Mercury is the core of a gas giant, as recently speculated, due to its density, it wouldn’t have enough metal in it, to build a Dyson sphere. Even assuming an alloy strong enough, to do the job, could be created from common matter, that is. There is also a problem with the center of gravity of the sphere, which would be where the sun would be and would be EXTREMELY unstable. Yes, I’ve done the math. It’s not as hard as you’d think.
“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not.
Both are equally terrifying.”
― Arthur C. Clarke
Lordy that is deep.
And so true
“Two possibilities exist: either the coffee has been sipped or this coffee has been sipped.
Both are equally terrifying.”
@Shawnaldo75
Even then, they are not really alone. Unless you are talking about after everyone is dead. Then whatever was doing the killing is alone.
@Shawnaldo75
I get your point.
I guess on the universal scale, it could be different. If we really are truly alone, then why are we here in the first place? Of all that vast distance and matter, it is just us. That is terrifying. Statistically speaking, it is way more likely that we are not alone. What then is out there? That is also terrifying.
What about we were alone, and then dog?
these types of things remind me of a comparison I read when I was a kid ...if you went to a jungle tribe that used drums to communicate in the village and you told them you had the ability to instantly send a message to a village far away..the primitive people could only imagine a drum so large it couldn't be built ...same with ideas like this ..the idea that we could only create a star's energy by building something so large odds are against it being built ...who knows what progress will be made in the coming centuries
I'm not sure this idea tracks linearly with the increasing complexity of technology. There are definite limits to how much technology can progress, to the nature of what can possibly be built, the laws of physics. Laws we can prove which mean it is only possible for anything ever to go so far, so fast etc etc. In your example, the tribal people could only imagine a giant drum because they had no current understanding of where these provable limits lie. You could explain to them in the space of a few hours that the sound their drums make are signals that are received by the ears of the neighbouring islanders and that a mobile phone is no different to a drum it just produces a signal that human ears cannot receive but that another piece of technology can receive. The basic concepts of drum sound waves impacting human ears vs a way more powerful electromagnetic wave impacting upon a technological ear aren't really worlds apart. But to do what a Dyson sphere could do but be way easier/smaller to build would require us to disprove laws of physics which is a way taller order than just explaining how a new piece of technology does the same thing the human body does but better, but still definitely within the hard limits of what can possibly be achieved
What a lot of people don't realize is that we can build a Dyson Swarm with current technologies. All it really takes is the labor. What would make it the easiest in the near term is the construction of efficient Von Neumann probes to disassemble Mercury (probably) to turn into more robots, solar power satellites, solar shades, StelLASERS, etc. All we really require is the will.
yea, the sun is just a big nuclear fusion reactor. maybe we could just, ya know, scale it down a bit.
7:00 - Chapter 1 - How would it work
12:30 - Chapter 2 - Variations
12:40 - Variant 1 - Dyson swarm
14:00 - Variant 2 - Dyson shell
15:50 - Chapter 3 - Do they already exist ?
18:20 - Chapter 4 - To infinity & beyond
I was literally just thinking “huh, I haven’t played Stellaris in a bit, maybe after work I’ll make a Dyson sphere”
Also watch Isaac Arthur’s video on the topic, it is FASCINATING
Big fan of Isaac Arthur’s channel
Just so. This channel is IDEAL for some collaborative episodes with Issac Arthur's channel!
True 👍
Oooh, I've built a Dyson sphere in Stellaris! I got a complaint from a neighboring civilization that I was ruining a beloved constellation!
Isaac is great!
Let's see those videos on Railguns and Railguns shooting Sattellites!
YES
The launcher is commonly called a mass driver.
I came to the comments to say exactly this.
Cool. Will definitely look into this then!
Railguns shooting satellites, or satellite shooting railguns?
Instead of only focusing on expansion, we need to also focus on *preservation* . We should build something akin to the "Standard Template Constructor" from warhammer 40k. It may sound silly but having something that could store our history, knowledge, and more importantly our technology would ensure that if we were to collapse and revert because of some cataclysm we could return to our previous level of tech. Instead of having to rebuild and rediscover everything that we achieved.
Finally! Expanding is okay but this is imp too
I agree also on preservation if we can't live on this planet because we want to destroy it purposefully or accidentally what is the point of expanding and destroying everything we contact we first need to get to terms with we have a limited amount of resources and limited space and build systems where we aren't forced to leave a dying planet because we ruined it
real life save points would be great, reload if you screwed up or before facing an impossible endgame boss
@@alexjustalex_ Reality bending is currently outside of our capabilities.
A shame it didn’t really work in 40K... A lot was still lost and the tech they have they often don’t understand. At least they still have it, I suppose...
I like how even in video games like Stellaris, the Dyson Sphere megastructure is something galactic empires consisting of hundreds of planets and trillions of citizens still struggle to build, even if its just a game, it makes the mind boggle.
And then you get into the mods...
It's just a game though
@@wingerding and..?
@@shykorustotora that its just a game, it doesn't really matter how much resources were put towards it in the game...
@@wingerding Did you like... not watch the video or something...?
“This coffee has been sipped” The title of the Simon Whistler biography
How are there not more comments about this haha
I was wondering if I was losing my mind when I heard this.
You say this was an Adobe error but we all know the truth.. Simon's beard has become sentient and gained the power of speech.
Eli Clemons too funny, I just spit out my drink laughing.
@@jenniferneasham1531 Was your drink coffee?
"The coffee has been spit..."
Tribe of the Iron Flame yep! Thank god it was kinda old cause it landed straight in my lap. Things could have gotten very hot if you get my drift 🤪
With the Fees Adobe charges, I guess blaming them for anything that doesn't work out as you wanted is included in the price.
There’s a game in early access thats based around building a Dyson Sphere, it requires you to colonize and use the resources of several planets to build one, so definitely a crazy amount of work to build
Larry Niven's Ringworld novel was the book that that introduced me to Dyson Spheres back in the 1980's
Here's something fun you can do with a Dyson Swarm: move a star. Because photons have momentum, and because the waste heat emitted from the objects in the swarm is in the infrared with a lower momentum then the photons emitting from the star, if you leave a hole in the swarm, you can get the star to push itself in the opposite direction of the hole. It might take a while to get there, but we could all go on vacation to Proxima Centauri.
Caplin engines
Richard Flanagan Yeah, Caplan Thrusters sound like a fascinating way to avoid colliding with a neutron star or some shite.
Edit: Also, the Caplan Thruster as Kurzgesagt envisioned it would make a star last longer because it would be lessening the mass over time.
Check out the video Stellar Engine, on Kurzgesagt. Excellent exploration of the topic.
I can see how that could work, in theory, but that would be predicated on being able to hold the rest of the reflective structure rigidly in place
The Centauri system is already headed our way!
"THIS COFFEE HAD BEEN SIPPED." I found the first shirt idea for the first wave of Megaprojects merch
3:59 I’ve recently been binge watching this channel and several of your side channels as a soundtrack to some smoke sessions 🍃🍃🪴and these 10 seconds blew my freaking mind. I am too damn high, love your content, barely scratched the surface
Loved it. Your helping me with history, geography and now theoretical physics.
Much appreciated
"We've gained vast knowledge of mathematics, astronomy and physics... and the question now is: What are we going to do with it?" Well it seems like we are going to ignore all that and claim that the earth is flat.
I find the fact that so many are now believing that so sad I could just cry......(ლ‸－)(－‸ლ)
@@Tracy137 You would do well not to misunderestimate the flat-earthers. After all, they have representatives all around the globe, and they realize that they have nothing to fear but sphere itself.
@@paradisepipeco - that was good. Cheered me up on a VERY bad day. THANK YOU!
@@Tracy137 What frightens me about the flat-earthers are their well-rounded ambitions of flat-out global domination. This is way over the edge. Video evidence of their diabolical plans to attack important targets in our nation's capital has just been leaked: czcams.com/video/I_ykY1CIhwc/video.html
@temporarysanity -umm there is a WEALTH of evidence to PROVE the earth is ROUND. Too much evidence to prove that, actually. The dogma is the flat earthers still insisting their theory is the right one despite the HUGE mountain of evidence to the contrary. I think Galileo would be calling THEM the fools.
We definitely need a railgun episode, especially considering the technology has moved from the realm of science fiction into reality.
Railgun is 100 years old! Actually Tesla had much cooler stuff that used freakfency!
Based warhawk
My favorite gun in Fallout 4
Its a shame railguns are kinda eh for military applications (power needed, fragility, complexity, and lack of role to fill)
@CR You're @ctually a gay prince so you called yourself as a princess!
Great episode. Building the sphere to capture energy creates another problem. Relaying the power to the need. As I listened I thought of a couple of Asimov's robot novels that take place on such an energy relay station and one on Mercury. Star Trek and Asimov....love it!!!
As a huge Star Trek fan myself, this was so fascinating to watch! I actually saw that TNG episode not so long ago (for the umpteenth time, lol), and it's one of my favourites because it shows good old Scotty again :)
The vacuum cleaner company should release a product called “The Sphere” as an April Fools day prank
They haven't?
I imagine a commercial featuring a solar powered vacuum with its own sun inside a compressed time space module.
I almost skipped this one because I thought it was a vacuum. Marketing has ruined my mind.
I actually thought (at first) that this video was going to be about a vacuum cleaner. ;)
This coffee has been sipped.
Is it me or did you hear that overlapping at 4:02
@@Sledgeace That's kinda the joke
I legitimately thought I was having a stroke
I thought I was hallucinating jeez
The coffee is where he keeps his coke.
What is life without dreams?..I didn't realize Simon was a philosopher...How deep and profound!
Mr Simon here.. has kept my mind running... I really appreciate your content.. in depth but not bland.. keeps the audience well built and thought out.. love your content sir
Humanity: (clicks Build Dyson Sphere)
Universal Overlord: You require more minerals!
Steve Burke In a far away stellar empire
“The Xeno scum have begun work on a megaproject”
You would probably want to make it out of and in the same orbit as the Asteroid belt and start with a ring and build out. Also, the panels themselves could be just a few mills thick.
Will the Lizard People let us do this?
YOU REQUIRE MORE VESPENE GAS
I loved this. Professor Dyson passed away in February of this year. In honor of him, a few friends of mine and I are taking on a project so massive that it can only be done in pixelated form... we are using the game Kerbal Space Program to make a dyson sphere first around the "earth" (in game it is called "kerbin") and then we will build the bigger version around the sun. We have a guy in the team who did the calculations... We will need about 5 trillion launches in total (can launch a dozen at a time, so it won't literally take forever) with all components weighed and measured and built to be easily interlocking. We are, I feel that I should note, building the bubble version but it will be left with strategic openings so we can still launch into space. Did you know, with all of human technological advancements.... our nuclear power is actually steam power. We literally might as well be running steam engine type trains. Instead of coal (with all that carbonate output) to heat water into steam so we can build enough pressure to spin a turbine..... Well, nuclear power has the dirty radiation and leftover fissionable wastes, and uses that heat to turn water into steam in order to build up the pressure to turn a turbine. It really is quite simple, and oh-so-stupid. We lose out on most of the energy of every split atom. Fire, yes... That was a huge leap for humanity.... nuclear fission, not so much. More of a setback, really. I loved how you started with the "unless you hang around with theoretical physicists" part..... Physics and biology have always been 2 of my passions in life. Call me super-nerd.. I love it... 😁❤🤓 Loved this video and all the rest that you do on the other channels. I will have to watch through your entire library of videos so i can have a better idea for suggestions (don't want to say "hey Simon, do something on the ISS") .... 😁
You might be able to do the same thing with Simple Rockets 2 (it's a new space flight and rocket simulator made by the company that built SimplePlanes).
Although I don't know if the fact it has fully adjustable fuel types, nozzle lengths, chamber pressures (yeah, it has stuff Kerbal Space Program does not; both are great games though), etc will be of use to you guys for this project.
Edit--Scott Manley showing what it can do in terms of its builder:
czcams.com/video/yG2ZrCLDwUY/video.html
Look at star warsman on Twitter ok
Also your project may be mute when the next Kerbal space program comes out which is radically different than the old program. Simple rockets seems to be too inherently limited having been expanded from a mobile phone app. Nevertheless, it has some new functionality; including a way to edit and create planets and easily program launches with block coding similar to Kerbin apparently.
@@michaelskywalker3089 Are you referring to Simple Rockets or Simple Rockets 2?
If you're referring to the latter, Simple Rockets 2 is *not* simple at all. It's rocket science. You can adjust the fuel types of engines, the nozel type and length, the chamber pressure, etc. Rocket science goes into making engines that work for what you need.
super-nerd
6:25 A casual random shot of simon floating in air
Sh*t, yeah!
Also, what's the secret message about "this coffee" at 3:54? %-)
[some weird alarm-related overdub from about 3:33]
Freaky!
I think they may be making a few more casual Star Trek references that I have the capacity to detect. It's bonkers.
Also, he wraps up (in a fairly cringe-worthy way) with an Aesop, not unlike many an episode of the Trek. (It may be true and all that, but flogging the point moves us trope-wards.)
[Oops, mixed metaphor: one *labours* a point, but *flogs* a dead horse. Ahem.]
Absolutely excellent video. Gorgeous studio.
16:19 If I were an alien looking to build a megastructure, I would build it around a dwarf star. Dwarf stars put out more than enough energy to sustain a civilization, can last for up to trillions of years, tend to be incredibly stable, and do not violently explode as they die.
KIC 8462852 (Tabby's Star) is an F-class main sequence star with a mass above the Chandrasekhar Limit, which means not only that it is roughly halfway through a life with half the span of our own star (likely intelligent life has not had enough time to evolve there), but when it dies and explodes violently it will leave behind a neutron star, spewing all kinds of inhospitable radiation and basically sterilizing that solar system.
I simply cannot see aliens building a megastructure in orbit of such terrible galactic real estate. It's one thing for us humans to build the California Memorial Stadium, but quite another for some highly developed race to basically build a planet, likely around a star which is alien to them, which will yield maybe, maybe 1% of the possible maximum the return on its initial investment.
Also, there are two red dwarf stars within five lightyears of KIC 8462852. That's where we should be looking for Dyson structures, as soon as we have the technology to do it.
Yea, also if advanced intelligent life were really that common then they almost certainly would've colonized the entire galaxy (including our own planet perhaps billions of years before complex life evolved thus precluding our existence), or at a bare minimum left behind enough wreckage for us to have a fairly easy time seeing signs of alien life. As a quick demonstration, Tabby's star is approximately 1500 light years from us, Milky Way is about 52000 light years in radius, assume that in a disc of the milky way of about 1500 light-years in radius you have about 1 advanced civilization arising every 100,000 years, and you get 1200 new civilizations every 100,000 years, assume that life first could've arisen 5 billion years after the Milky Way was formed, about 8 billion years ago, and you get approximately 60 million civilizations that have had the ability to take control of their solar systems and start venturing out to colonize other stars. Assuming the higher end of number of stars in the Milky way of about 400 billion, that means there'd have been about ~6700 stars per civilization they could colonize. Certainly a lot, but given that the average age of these civilizations is ~4 billion years old, they would only need to colonize about 2 stars every million years in order for the entire Milky Way to have been claimed by someone, leaving various traces of their existence everywhere, and probably again precluding our existence as we would've been either disassembled, or colonized and terraformed, long before we could arise. As a note on that perspective, if the galaxy is empty of intelligent life, and we decide to go gungho on colonization, humanity can colonize the entire Milky Way in a measly 100,000 years. Even if most civilizations never cared about going beyond their home planet even if they had the technology to (and seeing Tabby's star be engulfed in a Dyson Sphere would indicate that those 1200 new civilizations every 100,000 years would probably usually build dyson spheres even if they never bothered to colonize other star systems, which by itself would be fairly unlikely to have escaped our notice even if they were only a small fraction of all the stars in the sky), it only takes a couple particularly gungho civilizations that are smart enough to leave the ancient giants well enough alone until they can defend themselves from them, and take most of the unclaimed stars for themselves to get a civilization spanning the galaxy, again precluding our existence. So if advanced intelligent life is indeed that common, then our understanding of physics would have to be fundamentally wrong on a major level, that made dyson spheres and colonizing other star systems relatively pointless and expensive compared to whatever new options become available with the new physics, in which case it would beg the question why any hypothetical aliens around Tabby's Star would be building one if there wasn't any point to it, and why the galaxy isn't awash in these dyson spheres if apparently so many civilization push through with building one that we could see one being built a mere 1500 light years away, only within decades of us both getting the technology to search for them, and coming up with the concept so we know what to look for.
Check out Issac Arthur's channel, he goes beyond red dwarf stars to black hole farming
@@Treviisolion You are making way too many unsubstantiated assumptions and way too many mistakes in your calculations, as well as leaving out ton of possible limiting factors.
Kibernautas i double checked my calculations, they should be correct though I did accidentally say diameter instead of radius in one part so I did fix that, and that would change the numbers as well.
And your right, I am making assumptions that are unsubstantiated, but perhaps more than you might think, because we kind of have to until we get more evidence. 1. That the laws of physics we know are mostly correct. If they aren’t then what we think most likely that aliens would do might not be true. 2. That any civilization advanced enough and desirous enough to leave their home planet and build a dyson sphere would also be both advanced enough to colonize other stars (which they definitely are especially as a dyson sphere can also help accelerate ships to lightspeed to travel to other stars) and probably expansionist and greedy enough to want to colonize other stars. Perhaps not all, but at least some fraction of them considering that is probably the path humans would take. 3. That the earliest a civilization could have arisen was 8 billion years ago given the Milky Way galaxy’s age of 13 billion years and the Sun’s age of not quite 5 billion years. That said realistically advanced civilizations would probably be more common the older the galaxy gets, but I made a simplification for the math, as it doesn’t change the answer much, and also makes it more likely for some ancient civilization to just been first on the scene and if desirous colonized the entire galaxy stripping it for parts and whatnot to feed either a unified galactic civilization (if this species were particularly long-lived and cooperative or somehow able to get around the lightspeed barrier for at least communications as otherwise the outer regions of the galaxy would need to wait tens of thousands of years for communication which at least for current humans would be impossible to maintain a cohesive culture and government) or a field of galactic civilizations most of which would be unable to really interact with each other thanks to lightspeed limitations. 4. This is the assumption most obvious that I made, and the one with perhaps the least backing. The one that on average in a radius of 1500 lightyears you get 1 advanced civilization every 100,000 years. There are a couple of reasons why I chose this, and I did make some simplifications such as ignoring the density of stars in a given radius of the milky way both as a factor in how many chances they provide for advanced civilizations to develop and how the density itself could affect the chances of advanced civilizations developing and assumed that the chance is approximately equal across the galaxy. Mainly because it doesn’t matter for the point I’m trying to make. Putting that to the side for the moment and returning to the main assumption, I chose 100,000 years both because it is approximately the amount of time at a minimum a civilization would need to colonize the galaxy if located near the fringe of the Milky Way as opposed to the center (where the number would be more like 50,000 years), and because if true means that we would be incredibly lucky to be seeing a type II civilization that hadn’t gotten around to colonizing the stars around us (or us if they didn’t really care for respecting life on other planets), and was probably only starting considering that we don’t see a large region of space that gravitationally appeared to have stars, but was dark due to their stars being covered in Dyson Sphere, depending on the build we may also see points of infrared light (or other light depending upon temperature of the dyson sphere) being given off as waste heat but almost nothing in the other bands, certainly nothing that would look like any known type of star. You can either decrease the number 100,000 which would make it less odd that we were observing such an apparently new civilization so close to us, but also drastically increase the number of civilizations that should have existed before now, or increase that average year time and decrease the number of civilizations that should have existed and thus make it more reasonable why the galaxy is apparently empty of any signs of life while also making it more unlikely we can see such a civilization so close to us. The 1500 light years radius was based mainly on distance from us to Tabby’s Star and the fact that it appears that if there is a Dyson Sphere being built there that no other Dyson Spheres have been built anywhere else nearby, at least not in large quantities enough to create a noticeable dark spot in the sky that appears to affect things gravitationally (unlike dark matter which appears to be diffuse and relatively evenly spread out though clumping up near the center of the galaxy). There is also the implicit assumption that we have passed enough great filters that reaching a Dyson Sphere one day is decently likely so we can count ourselves as a nascent advanced civilization. You can remove that assumption in which case the radius of on average 1 advanced civilizations arriving in a given time-period is unknown, though you’d have to imagine they are still common as otherwise it’d be unlikely we’d be the ones to see a nascent type II civilization out of all the pre-type I civilizations that would no doubt exist in such a case. And again it only takes one civilization colonizing most of the galaxy to leave behind large traces that would be much easier to discover than anything we’ve found. A hundred stay-at-home civilizations I can see. A thousand existing and not one militant xenophobic one that colonized the galaxy in order to prevent any new civilizations from arising or even just a diplomatic yet explorative one that colonized only a certain type of star across the galaxy but still leaving behind major traces of their activities, let alone among ten thousand, hundred thousand, a million different civilizations capable of reaching Type II, not one having the aspirations to try for Type III? I find myself doubtful of such a prospect, but we only have one data point, so we can’t be certain. If you know of any other assumptions I made then let me know.
@@Treviisolion Lets address your calculations. They are not mathematically incorrect, they are factually incorrect. Milky Way is 13 BYO, and on Earth it took roughly 5 BY for civilisation to arise. You simply subtracted 5 from 13 and came to conclusion that first civilisations would start to appear 8 BY ago. No problem with math, problem with reality. 13 BY ago there were almost no other elements except for hydrogen, helium and bit of lithium.
Billions of years are needed for stars to create other elements, explode as supernovas, spreading those elements. It takes billions of years more of such stars exploding for other elements to accumulate in amounts substantial to form new solar systems that have Earth like planets.
When there were enough heavier elements to form Earth like planets? Something between 5 and 13 billion years ago, though I would say it should be closer to 5 BY ago, as higher concentration of heavier elements would lead of mostly "Super Earths" forming, which is not good for civilisations.
If we put time of forming solar systems with Earth like planets, lets say 8 BY ago, subtract 5 BY for civilisation to arise, you get first civilisations arising 3 BY ago, not 8 BY ago.
There lies my problem with your calculations.
simon: mentions being a TNG fan
my brain: omg simon looks like a combo of picard and riker
Piker of Ricard?
Oisin Murphy Sipiker. :)
Reikard
Well if having a beard and being bald is your criteria,ok.
Picard and Data, surely.
Again, another excellent presentation. Well done guys.
Love the videos, keep it up Simon!
"“The history of every major galactic civilisation tends to pass through three distinct and recognisable phases, those of Survival, Enquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.
For instance, the first phase is characterised by the question How can we eat?, the second by the question Why do we eat?, and the third but the question Where shall we have lunch?”
- Douglas Adams
Somebody doesn't believe in the Oxford comma.
Why is there a comma after every question mark of yours?
To order to achieve an interstellar culture a civilisation needs to avoid
1) Civilisation destroying thermonuclear war.
2) Green inspired de-industrialisation.
3) Bureaucracy taking over and successfully stopping change
4) Theocracy taking over. Whether it be Christian, Moslem, Judaism, or Hinduism
they would all be equally damaging
5) Scientific illiteracy in the general population. To the majority of the population in
the USA or for that matter the UK the operation of technology is indistinguishable
from magic. Viz the Deleted Expletive Morons burning down 5G base stations.
@@donaldboughton8686 so we need the Emperor and the Imperial Truth i hear you say.
You mean like How did trump happen? Why now? And Where's my mask? I need more toilet paper.
For more on this idea, see Science and Futurism with ISaac Arthur, he deep dives into ideas like this to crazy levels of details/
Yeah fantastic channel.
So much this!!
His channel is great. His speech impediment has gotten better too. Some of his earlier vids were hard to listen to. I always thought he should have someone else read his scripts
Isaac is a Waskewy Wabbit.
Yes!
Very good. The side shots don’t work, as you probably know, given this was taken a year ago. But love these. They are great briefing-style videos and must take a lot of work to put together. Great delivery too. Dry humour is where it’s at.
Hey Simon! I went to LSU 99-03 and took Astronomy as an elective. Bradley Schaefer was my professor. He’s a nice guy and I enjoyed the class. Thanks for bringing back the memory. ☺️ 🌞 🌎
One of my favorite Star Trek: TNG episodes. There is a novel by Larry Niven, Ringworld, published in 1970 that you may find interesting. A great read.
One of the greatest sf stories ever written.
How about Orbitsville by Bob Shaw? A full Dyson sphere, rather than just a narrow strip. Breathtaking in its vision.
a ring seems technically possible where a sphere has problems.
3:50 "THIS COFFEE HAS BEEN SIPPED" XD
You're @ctually a gay prince so you called yourself as a princess!
@@THEBIGGAME683 ?
Super cool video! The first time I saw “Relics” I was too young to know what a Dyson Sphere was but now I wish they had given it its own episode where it was the main point of the episode instead of just being a tacked on subplot in “the one where Scotty comes back.”
That said,Scotty on the holodeck always brings a tear to my eye.
Simon this was brilliant. Very interesting. More videos with conceptual contents please 🤞
Simon: *shows Dyson ring*
Me, a Halo vet: mother of God...
If you like the halo rings, you're gonna shit your pants when you read halo: ghosts of onyx and halo: glasslands. (I think it also shows up in halo: the Thursday war and halo: mortal dictata)
@@BlueTeam-John-Fred-Linda-Kelly Try Ringworld by Larry Niven
Halo rings are teeny. Teeeny tiny compared to orbitals (from the culture) or rings (from ringworld).
Blue team John, Fred, Linda, Kelly Are you referring to Trevelyan?
@@cjeam9199 im sure orbitals arent that big either
There are many sci-fi stories on this sort of theme. You’ve probably come across Larry Niven’s _Ringworld_ series, set on a solid Dyson-ring-type structure whose inhabitants have mostly forgotten that it is an artificial construct. He went into a lot of detail about issues like the system of orbiting blinds around the star to create night and day, and an active pumping system to keep the oceans from silting up. He didn’t realize, when he was writing the first book, that the structure would only experience a net gravitational attraction from the star perpendicular to the plane of the ring; there would be nothing to keep it drifting within its plane. (I think this was pointed out to him by a bunch of smartarse engineering students at MIT.)
He actually used that oversight as a plot point in his second _Ringworld_ novel, where he added vast steering engines and a control system to keep the ring in the right position, only somebody had stolen some of the engines (not appreciating their importance to the very existence of the Ringworld), and urgent corrective action was needed by the heroes to keep everybody from being destroyed.
Also Bob Shaw did a nice pair of books on _Orbitsville_ , which was a complete solid Dyson sphere, with a ring of entrance/exit holes around the equator relative to the contained star’s rotation.
I did some sums and there is INSUFFICIENT energy to build a complete dyson sphere when they need to acquire more materiel from neighboring systems. relocating materials from other stars would the EXCEED THE total output of the star in its ENTIRE LIFETIME.
Loved Ringworld! "Scrinthe" I'd love to patent the formula for that stuff...
Great episode. Keep up the good work
Thank you! I really love the way you explain things, and your English is beautiful too)
If you're thinking about other theoretical stuff, do a vid on space elevators!
Chris Ace Combat fan by any chance? See you in the sky’s trigger😉🛫✈️🛩
Orbital rings are better.
I'm more of an orbital tether guy myself
I too was about suggest that
I was going to request space elevators/space tethers as well.
Larry Niven's classic novel Ringworld derives from the idea of a Dyson Sphere.
Ringworld only partially explores this possibility. To see the ultimate vision, you have to read Orbitsville by Bob Shaw. Which is a true Dyson sphere.
Yeah. IIRC, he imagined using a partial shell to get around the problem of gravity at the "poles" and with a ring "only" 1000 miles wide with a circumference equal to earth's orbit, you can get a surface area of over 300 million earths.
@@jimstanley_49 This is for me the most compelling argument why a Dyson sphere is BS from the finest... Who exactly need that much of space for what exactly ? So while nice its utter BS to think that something like this exist somewhere in the Universe. There is no reason to built it. Its in a row with the dam between Gibraltar and Morocco... Technological possible but oh well BS.
@@hansjorgkunde3772 and 100 years ago visiting the planet's and talking to people on the other side of the world in real time was BS as well
@@MalfunctionNeo see there is no need for such a construct, it simply make no sense from a engineering viewpoint. Especially not for energy gain. First for what use do you need that much energy, second, why don't you produce the energy in a fusion plant?
If you can built a Dyson sphere, you also control Fusion energy since like thousand years...
Btw talking via a cellphone was even 1980 a dream, the first cellphone came 1983...
Alone the material needed for a Dyson sphere is most likely more mass than the Solar system itself... utter BS sorry.
I like you telling us about stuff so much that Im watching this with about as full a knowledge of Dyson Spheres as youtube offers.
This was a great one Simon good on ya people are ignorant to this space oriented so it’s good to go down said path of space to keep the average human being up to speed about what’s out there or could be
Disappointed this had nothing to do with the vacuum cleaners.
same bruh
*How come no one in the comments is talking about Tabby's star as the possible example of a Dyson sphere?*
It's not proven, but no conclusive alternative explanation has been delivered. It's still a possibility that Tabby's star is evidence of a super advanced alien civilization.
It’s doesn’t? James hold my pint.
@@helipeek2736 HE called me JAMES, and he let me hold his PINT! :D Can do Paul! #theBeerHasBeenSipped
The Dyson sphere, a 400 dollar toy ball.
We need to get Simon a little table for his coffee!!
Simon, your last speech is really touching.
I really enjoyed this theoretical science episode. I would love to see you make more videos of that type.
😀
Do Space Elevators! There are several different designs and the engineering challenges are fascinating
Who's a legendary legend here early?!
Legends.
Yo
Mrs_Segundo I’m in there as a legend! You know Simon throws fire from his fingertips
Everyone :-)
It's easy enough to find with a quick Google search (as I just did) but for convenience, for anyone wondering which episode of Star Trek TNG Simon references a few times because it features a Dyson Sphere/Shell, it is episode 4 or series 6 entitled "Relics".
When Simon first mentioned it I thought "wow, I thought I'd seen all the episodes but this sounds like a really interesting one that I must have missed" because I'd hoped it might have a bit of an Arthur C Clarke "Rendezvous with Rama" (RwR) type vibe with the crew exploring an abandoned alien megastructure but when I identified the episode I did remember watching it so - and I don't think this is a spoiler but rather trying to set people's expectations so they don't have my slight disappointment - it doesn't have any RwR type of vibe, the Dyson Sphere is somewhat incidental to what is primarily a character-driven episode that is set pretty much entirely on board the Enterprise. Or at least that's how I remember it.
PS - Another great video Simon. Thanks. I came to your channel late so have until now been watching your more recent videos and I was surprised when you said this was only the 5th or 6th video that you did for your channel because it already looks and sounds extremely polished. I guess I'm so used to seeing quite good and experienced CZcamsrs look back on their earlier efforts that are often laughably amateurish compared to their current content but it looks as if, at least on video 5 or 6 (or whatever this one is) of your channel, you had it nailed in terms of quality pretty much straight out of the gate.
There's a book, ST:TOS which involves a Dyson sphere as well. Remember reading it decades ago, McCoy wanted to stay behind but eventually agreed to return with the crew to the Enterprise. Very good and gave an excellent explanation of just what it was and how it worked. This would have been in the 1980s.
4:55, the strange audio mix is Simon saying "this coffee, it said sip"
Hi, hope everyone OK and staying somewhat sane. I'm isolating for months and need Simon to keep my entertained whilst learning. If only teachers were this great at sharing knowledge when I was at school, I might have been more interested in geography lol.
14:21 love the short digression about yottawatts.
Relics is one of my favourite Next Gen episodes. Thanks for explaining the Dyson Sphere
18:10 from what I know Tabby's star mystery is actually somewhat solved, and you're right Simon, it seems to be consistent with dust clouds. No aliens yet - it's never aliens anyway, unfortunately. I wish we got more answers from the "wow" signal though, but it was probably nothing as well.
Last I heard the hypothesis is a collision between two exoplanets. Is that what you are referring to?
@@taintsweatnope5093 Maybe you heard more recently than me. In any case, that seems like a hypothetical source for the dust/debris cloud that obscures the view, so, still the same thing?
@@cheaterman49 I heard about the possible collision on PBS Space-time. Was just curious if you had heard more details. In either case dust / debris seem to be the leading idea.
@@CHM6196 Oh yeah, then I probably just forgot the hypothesis as it was probably presented as a bit of a wild guess? I'm very much a PBS Space Time aficionado myself :-P
Yes to the rail gun idea! Also solar sails and warp drives.
I found about Dyson Spheres from Halo, the book series. Specifically, Halo: Ghosts of Onyx
I don’t remember where I learned about Dyson spheres, but putting an entire Dyson sphere plus star in a stable slip space bubble at the center of an artificial planet blew my mind lol
@@Papercut337 Right? I still think about it to this day, and i read that book like 10 years ago. A civilization that could pull that off should be able to exand into multiple galaxies, right?
In the event that a "shell" was constructed around the sun, it would essentially create a permanent eclipse. Last I checked, life relied on light.
A hypothetical Dyson sphere project could include a window letting the Sun shine on Earth and other occupied planets.
You'd live on the inner surface of the sphere. Theoretically.
@@colormedubious4747 The inner surface of a Dyson sphere would be way too hot for our kind of life, letting out a controlled amount of energy to habitats on the outside or to actual orbiting planets would allow a livable or even pleasant temperature.
In my previous comment I was suggesting a big slit along the ecliptica, allowing the usual amount of sunshine to reach the planets while harvesting any sunshine going up or down towards interstellar space. Obviously there would be columns holding the halves apart without casting actual shadows on the planets. Such columns could even be the skeleton upon which energy collection panels are mounted.
@@johndododoe1411 Depends on the radius of the sphere. The idea is to capture ALL the energy of the star. It sounds like you want a ringworld or a swarm, rather than a sphere. If you'll contact our sales office on Magrathea, they can offer you a number of options with reasonable payments and suitable terms. Please allow 48 to 64 millennia for delivery.
@@colormedubious4747 No ringworld, no swarm. Just two solid hemispheres completely capturing all the wasted energy not going in the direction of the planets.
It's always great to see Simon and his legs get back together to do another Mega Projects video!
Suplex Cotton I was thinking during this video that I’ve never seen his shoes before! He won’t even revel them on business blaze!
I'd guess that during BB filming he's wearing those weird shoes with the individual toes like little gloves for your feet lol
One word for you: Ringworld. (See novels by Larry Niven for more.)
And figure out the old Philosopher's Stone so we can have transmutation of matter.
Great video, also great call back to TNG, one of the best shows ever.
Love that you touched on this subject. Next you should look into a Jupiter Brain 😉
We would need one hell of a long extension cable!
Let’s start with Ringworld, seems ambitious enough. Larry Niven would appreciate it. 🤪
Ah-ha! I was wondering if anyone else would mention that novel.
@@Skraeling1000 So was I. I read it when I was in college, early '70s.
"Oh, the Ringworld is unstable,
The Ringworld is unstable,
Did the best that he was able,
And it's good enough for me."
Yes absolute yes, do more videos of the visions and ideas of mankind. The things like this is insane interesting becuse it gives thoughts of how the lives after us can envolve in diffrent. directions
Just found this channel today. Good find.
That was the STTNG episode where Scotty came back, right? Anyway, I'm liking the theoretical megaprojects. Keep em coming.
Scotty kept himself alive by looping his signal though the transporter. Good stuff.
Yes, the episode is called "Relics" and it's an excellent episode.
@@JeffDeWitt yes it was
It somehow made me sad that they wasted the Dyson Sphere in this episode. This structure is on the top-tier of important discoveries in all of Star Trek and after this episode we never hear of it again, at least not outside of novels and games.
There was. And they did him dirty imho!
Theres a type of satellite, typically called a “lagite”, that is similar to the statite in that it relies on pressure from light and solar wind to stay at a fixed altitude, but the lagite will have some horizontal motion. A lagite can be thought of as a hybrid between a typical satellite and the statite. The name comes from the fact that it will lag behind a satellite that is orbiting the sun. You can get very unusual looking orbits with these things by adjusting the angle at which the solar sail reflects light away from the spacecraft, for example you can use these to create a dyson swarm that rarely or perhaps never blocks light from the sun’s equator, leaving the planets bathed in natural sunlight.
Cool job keep it up love this
Great episode. Thanks. 🇨🇦
An interesting end, Simon waxes poetic over the strides into the heavens we could make, if humanity could just quit screwing around....
I really like that you’ve covered a theoretical megaproject. It would be interesting to see them occasionally. Another interesting one could be Mars colonisation.
The chair is against the wall.
John has a long mustache.
Wounds my heart with a monotonous languor.
*THE COFFEE HAS BEEN SIPPED*
Oh good, the invasion starts tonight...
In Stephen Baxter's 'The Time Ships' (an authorized sequel to Well's 'Time Machine') the time traveler visits an alternate future where the Morlocks were intelligent and civilized and had constructed a solid Dyson Sphere. It is explained that they couldn't even come close to the necessary material by dismantling the planets, so they instead magnetically siphoned material off of the Sun itself. This sphere was smaller than we usually think of, being built at Venus' distance from the sun rather than Earth's distance. This worked out well with the sun being smaller now thanks to the amount of material taken out of it so that the sphere's interior surface was mostly habitable instead of overheating, and also had the benefit of the smaller sun having a greatly extended life expectancy.
I straight love this channel. Ever since the Chernobyl biographies episode, I have been wanting something like this.
"It could be completed in about a decade" JC refers Simon back to video about Boston's Big Dig, :-D
Great episode!
I'm not a physicist and I don't want to sound like a pessimist but honestly I don't think this could be possible, ever! The shear magnitude of a feat such as this, the amount of raw material that would be required, the length of time that would be involved, the gravitational forces, the immense heat that would have to be overcome I mean seriously you're were to combine every human engineering feat ever accomplished in history it wouldn't even amount to a fraction of this! In truth I think this will forever have to remain in the pages of science fiction.
Speaking of theoretical solar system scale projects, I'd be interested in a megaprojects video on the Shkadov Thruster (so cool!)
Also, thanks for doing this video. I'm not sure if it was intentional, but as Freeman Dyson died a couple months age at the age of 96, it works as a fitting tribute to his life.
I can’t believe no one has asked what you need to clean the surface of a Dyson Sphere.
What gets rid of excess infrared radiation? 🤔
The giant Dyson vacuum. Probably works better than a Kirby
Windex.....lots of Windex....
@@MDP1702 Please tell me you're joking. They weren't serious about the dirt they were having fun with the name similarities between Dyson the vacuum and the sphere.
@@MDP1702 No problem. I hope my response didn't come across too heavy.
The term sphere has been taken too literally (including in star trek) it was never meant to be a sold object which is why the term Dyson Swarm is more common. I highly recommend you check out videos from Issac Arthur if you are interested in the subject!
I loved that episode of TNG, big fan here as well. "You told him how long it would really take? how are you going to be seen as a miracle worker?" it was something like that, been a long time XD. Did you know there is a game called the Dyson Sphere Project were the goal is to build one?
They can also be used (theoretically) to move the star. By reflecting the light back at the star, at a particular point in the orbit, you would increase the solar wind in one location, changing the motion of the star.
I think we're gonna need a space elevator long before we can build a Dyson sphere just from the expense of getting to orbit alone, as well as some AI robot improvements (human labor even at McDonald's or Walmart is expensive, human labor in space 70-80 million miles from Earth is a lot more expensive, and still more expensive when you need an army of trillions of them if you want to build it preferably before the sun burns out).
3:55 why did you overlap two people talking I can’t understand either of you?¿
Read the pinned comment
Sssshhh, quiet now. The coffee has been sipped.
I thought it was just my phone lolz
T H E C O F F E E H A S B E E N S I P P E D
Yay!
Simon is also a TNG nerd.
That episode is where they find Scotty inside a transporter buffer loop.
Just discovered this recently but I recall reading a novel years ago (Larry Niven IIRC) and he said for Ringworld (smaller than a Dyson sphere), it would be so huge that the Earth’s current population could be distributed evenly on the inside and you could walk for your entire life and never meet another person! 🤯
It's not that expensive. The “Utopia“ DLC goes on steam-sale often enough. After that, you just need to research “megastructural engeneering“, the “galactic wonders“ Ascention Perk, a shit- ton of alloys and you're good to go!
friedipar hive mind would like to know your location
That's got to be Stellaris, right?
@@chrisproost7290
It sure is
Gigastructurse mod has even crazier options, nicoll-dyson beams, quasi-stellar obliterators for those really pesky aliens that you need to just clear out their space all at once
@@chrisproost7290 EYYYY
“Hasn’t ever been built” *by humans, Simon. 😉
Or anyone. It's unstable, the Dyson swarm is far better.
Do you mean built?
@@TheGreatSteve And way, way harder to build, an dyson swarm is not that hard to build, it just huge, as in putting a couple of pebbles in an pile compares to the Keops pyramid.
And obviously building one would require that basically all humans and industry will live in space, use all that on earth and yes using an deathstar on earth would actually be pretty accurate.
Isaac Arthur had an fun idea of making rings of linking o'neill cylinders into an ring around the sun like an bicycle chain as an basic element here :)
And yes o'neill cylinders is something way more realistic, still an mega project as in an city in orbit, I guess we go dyson then they get and orbital solar power collectors get so common around earth they block too much out the sun.
Justin Kerr yeah thanks - corrected
Florida Man: “Here, hold my beer.”
One other problem is that the gravity from the material in the sphere would drag Jupiter, Saturn etc into a collision course...not to mention the ort cloud or kuiper belt
Not really, it would only be the mass of Mercury and it's mass not size that determines gravity. One problem it would have is not having enough gravity to keep things on it from getting drawn towards to sun
@@andrewthorne3570 the lack of gravity could be solved by increasing the mass, but then we come back to the first problem. One solution would be a "halo" that rotated causing a centripetal force to act as a pseudo gravity, but that is not a Dyson sphere.
"Ringworld" by Larry Niven is a variation on this, with an inner ring of rotating connected plates and gaps to synthesize night and day.
Horizon hypnosis was a risk for flying along the length. Very descriptive book.