2 hours ago
I’m not clear on the process of getting all the material to the exact radius of the star. It seems like a society would build, at most, a sparse ring around the sun with their planet as an anchor point. Why would they build an entire sphere shell and then, what, stop breeding at that precise moment?
an hour ago
Does anyone know how many candidates there are?
Would we approach such a civilization?
24 minutes ago
considering all dyson structures are beyond even our theoretical material science knowledge... we'd in no way approach them.
4 hours ago
this is a silly projection of our technological state, but our capacity to capture and "upgrade" slow photons is already improving, and the notion that a technological civilisation that considers a star as a convienient fusion energy source is wildly unlikly to have missed any possible way to control, direct, store and transmit energy or matter that physics will allow for. the other thing is that creatures that controll stellar output energy units, cant be fractios squabling things like us, there actions are epic and vast in ways we cant grasp, and the only thing we practice at that scale is the hubris to "rule out" things of which we can know nothing. better science, please.
4 hours ago
Sure, but we know in theory that a dyson swarm should work, and what that might look like, so when we see something like that, it's worth a look.
Where are you going to look for something you have no idea what it looks like and how do you know when you've seen it? Doesn't sound very scientific to me.
3 hours ago
These are good questions, I don't think it deserved the downvotes.
>our capacity to capture and "upgrade" slow photons is already improving
How about "Sisyphus Sphere?" :)
If not inescapable, then anyone can trivially use that same trick to make infinite energy in their garage, so if you can upgrade photons for free then you have no need to build a Dyson sphere anyway.
>a technological civilisation that considers a star as a convienient fusion energy source is wildly unlikly to have missed any possible way to control, direct, store and transmit energy or matter that physics will allow for
It's still possible they tried all those, and leeching off a convenient pre-existing natural fusor (with no build or repair expenses, for that subsystem at least) is simply the cheapest option.
I can already hear the obvious reply: "But who cares!! If they're so advanced who cares about money??"
Even (especially?) for an advanced technological civilization, you still want to choose the cheaper of two options, because some resource will always be limiting. You don't get highly advanced by making dumb decisions. ;)
TL;DR No Free Lunch defeats Indistinguishable From Magic