[Music]
when looking up at the night sky it's
fairly common to fill the edge to escape
the bounds of planet Earth and get into
the Stars but something we never stopped
to consider is the enormous amounts of
energy a spacefaring civilization like
the one we hope to become in as little
as 100 years would require to achieve
this endeavor it seems like a strange
question but how we might go about
powering our intergalactic ambitions
someday if something that we may really
need to start considering within the
next century but if we want to be a
truly spacefaring civilization then we
would have to look to energy sources
greater than the ones on our home planet
chiefly our host star the Sun is a huge
source of light heat and energy to the
earth and single-handedly allowed for
life on this planet to develop and yet
we use an absolutely miniscule fraction
of its total solar output increasing its
utilization would be key to meeting our
futuristic demands but how do you even
go about harvesting a star how could one
tiny civilization manage to completely
harvest something millions of times
bigger than our entire home world the
answer or at least an answer goes hand
in hand with the Kardashev scale and
what is known as a Dyson structure a
simple principle take a shell and
completely encapsulate a star
straightforward at a high level but
almost impossible from our perspective
but a completely closed shell isn't just
the only way since its popularization in
the 1960s the Dyson Sphere has been
edited altered and hypothesized over to
bring this almost inconceivable feat of
engineering more closely within our
grasp and that's just us all over the
universe there are stars to consume and
with such a vast new vacuum of space and
an abyssal supply it's not hard to look
up at the night sky and wonder could
this idea be in place somewhere in the
universe as civilizations grow they need
more energy to fulfill greater
ever-increasing desires a star is an
essential engine for life on any planet
be it plants or animals and with this in
mind when you've broken free of the
delicate position of your home world why
would you not seek to utilize more of a
star's gargantuan solar output
stars produce a phenomenal amount of
power for billions of years at a time
and there are hundreds of billions of
stars in most of the billions of
galaxies out there and that's just in
the part of the universe that we can
observe whether or not you believe that
we are heading for an unsustainable
entropy someday it's no secret that
there is more power available in this
universe than we could possibly imagine
or use but on our home planet the earth
we are missing out on nearly all of the
estimated 380 septillion watts of energy
the Sun is outputting naturally with all
we've already achieved as a race it is
human nature to wonder how we could
possibly begin to tap into this energy
source
once harvesting a star we could
revolutionize our race with technology
advancements never before thought
possible and once we've perfected the
technique we could use the energy to
move further out reach other stars and
do the same thing again this is just one
of the ways that we could begin to turn
the human race into a type 3 galactic
civilization we presume this principle
to be a universal one for all
intelligent races that might exist based
on the rules of the Kardashev scale the
idea that civilizations evolved through
set benchmarks based on the levels of
energy they need use and have available
to them earth is on the cusp of becoming
a type-1 planetary civilization capable
of utilizing all the energy from the Sun
that reaches our planet but the next
step up and the middle man between us
and a galactic civilization is a type
two stellar civilization capable of
controlling nearly all of the total
output of its host star it's not a
difficult scale to follow but the means
of which we could become a type 2 race
are very difficult to say the least
Michio Kaku a world-famous theoretical
physicist believes we can become a type
two civilization in 100,000 years but to
reach that landmark will first need to
be able to harvest our Sun but how how
could you even go about harvesting a
star
this is where one of the most famous
pieces of hypothetical machinery comes
into the mix the Dyson Sphere the idea
of putting a container around our Sun to
keep its output contained is a logical
idea but in practice is impossibly
ambitious and very inefficient to
approach first proposed in the 1937
sci-fi book at Star Maker Olaf Stapledon
detailed a diagram where a large
planetary orbit wide sphere encompasses
a star and its surrounding
life-supporting planets this idea then
formed the basis for Freeman Dyson 30
years later in his paper the search for
artificial stellar sources of infrared
radiation in this paper he detailed what
has come to be known as a Dyson
structure a means of capturing the true
potential of a star in the decades since
this idea has been refined and tweaked
from its old impossible format
down into a few ideas that are somewhat
more achievable for planet Earth the
first is the most famous Dyson shell
this is the simple inefficient approach
that would see a large shell placed
around our star perhaps with something
like solar panels on the inside this has
been a popular feature of science
fiction have fantasy but remains the
largest and most resource consuming
variant of the principle just look at
the sizes we'd be dealing with this
unrealistic generalization actually
prompted Freeman Dyson himself to
denounce the idea in 2013 so what about
something a bit more reasonable well
there is the idea of a Dyson ring this
would be the simplest form a large ring
of conjoined solar powered satellites
forming a ring around a star on the
other side we could build colonies each
with a huge supply of power and
maintained by the Sun's gravity this may
be the most realistic approach for us
but we'd of course want to expand and
this is where the problems start adding
more than one ring would create what is
known as a Dyson swarm it would be a
reasonable way to increase our presence
and boost our capacity but at this point
orbits becomes a dangerous issue a swarm
dramatically increases the chances of
two rings colliding and the orbit of the
star could potentially cause the debris
it leaves behind to destroy the other
rings eventually bringing the whole
colony down like dominoes adopting a
similar approach but accounting for the
dangers of gravity you have the Dyson
bubble this structure is composed of
many independent solar satellites
suspended a certain point around the
star not only are these satellites more
safe from colliding with one another by
default but the use of a solar sail
would allow for enormous amounts of the
Stars radiation pressure releases to be
caught counterbalancing the
gravitational pull of the star with an
equal amount of force in the opposite
direction keeping all the satellites an
equilibrium this may be the most
realistic option for us as a species but
still requires a lot of work at present
no solar sail and indeed no material we
have access to could withstand solar
pressure without being destroyed
completely by the time we might be in
need of a more efficient use of our own
Sun carbon nanotubes could provide a
possible method but then again we
haven't developed anything strong enough
yet other variants of the idea include
the Alderson disc a similar principle to
a dyson sphere but flat and not
spherical we also have Larry Nivens
sci-fi vision of a Dyson ring from his
book ring world where a civilization has
a belt going around his star and lastly
we have the Dyson net another not too
dissimilar principle to things like
Dyson swarms but the uses cables with
nets in between to trap solar energy all
these ideas are being refined but in
summer even being considered and
researched into however it's no secret
that the technological drawbacks on this
kind of project are far far out of our
control the main primary object
defeating purpose of a Dyson structure
can be summarized with one word scale
the sheer sizes we're dealing with are
enormous just look at our Sun and
compared to the earth not only this but
you'd need a shell larger than the star
itself to allow for functional room and
this adds billions of cubic miles to
your internal project other drawbacks
include the heat destroying any possible
progress we could make the gravity of
the star tearing down our work and
another big hurdle the resource
requirements the entirety of our planet
and every natural resource on here
wouldn't even come close to the material
demands of a Dyson Sphere in both
quantity and durability to create a
Dyson Sphere even an inch thick we'd
have to completely harvest dozens of
planets right down to their cause
completely inconceivable at the current
time for our race the very idea of a
sphere is not only flawed by its own
requirements but by us alternatives to
developing solar power and making it
more efficient and colonizing systems by
inhabiting so
planets are to much more reasonable
ideas for us as a species we don't need
a star to get to Mars and we likely
won't need a stars worth of energy to
get somewhere like Kepler 22b in the
distant future who says we would even
need a star for energy humans are much
closer to making a breakthrough in
nuclear fusion technology a clean local
and unimaginably efficient method of
producing power and capable of enormous
outputs
why bother harvesting a star when a
family could get all the energy they
need for a day or more with a single cup
of water all these methods are more
reasonable ideas so does this mean we're
caught up in science fiction and we are
overlooking the obvious perhaps we need
to reassess what we think are the
requirements of Nikolai Kardashev
civilization benchmarks perhaps we are
ignoring easy ways to generate similar
outcomes but truth be told it's just the
construction that is inconceivable once
setup it could realize unending
possibilities for mankind so say we
managed it and completed our Dyson
structure what next building our first
Dyson Sphere would allow for the process
to be evaluated refined and perfected
human instinct is to go further and
beyond and if we had the capabilities to
build such a massive structure we'd
probably have the capability to visit
other stars and we could move to smaller
stars like Proxima Centuri our nearest
neighbor and we could begin the process
again this time we could automate parts
of it too with a more efficient
technique established we could use our
newfound energy and apply it to the
conquest of other stars and this could
be one of the proposed ways we could
begin to colonize the Milky Way galaxy
while this may not be the most efficient
way to spread out in interstellar space
it would certainly allow for the most
available energy and power of any method
which would make colonizing planets in
the Stars solar neighborhood much easier
but why look at it from a conquest
perspective there are those who believe
we might actually be able to use a Dyson
structure to achieve a perfect reality
with science beginning to ponder the
possibility of discovering a way to
transfer consciousness onto computers
there are those who have suggested that
we should create some kind of structure
with everybody's consciousness built
into a perfect utopia place this around
a star and we could create literal
heaven lasting ten billion years at a
time
however this is just a wish that some
people out there have
it's unlikely that this would ever be
possible given the instability of stars
and a significant leap in science we'd
have to make but the idea is a profound
one why rest your chances of eternal
peace on a God that may not exist when
you could use this feat of engineering
to build paradise yourself this is just
one of the crazy ideas put forward and
it does well to illustrate the
outlandish potential of such a
breakthrough for now though we are a
long long way off even coming close to
being able to make something that could
loop around maintain feed off of and
withstand a star as for other beings in
the universe well we've made a few
interesting discoveries that to some
suggest that this principle may be
universal Freeman Dyson himself proposed
that looking for Dyson spheres around
other stars would be a great and
efficient method of detecting
extraterrestrial intelligence as it
could be determined through light
fluctuations which would be observable
from earth so you can imagine the
hysteria that flooded the scientific
community when star KIC 846 to 852 was
observed to be dipping in luminosity by
up to 22% in cycles that suggested a
huge object such as a cluster of solar
satellites and may be orbiting it this
was observed in 2015 and caught the
attention of the scientific community
for a further three years simply because
no one could explain what was causing it
and nobody could prove that this wasn't
being caused by a Dyson structure though
this theory is gradually starting to
wear thin with the rise of new
hypotheses of dust and planetary
collisions it did get us all thinking
about the genuine possibility that this
could be a universal principle which
could be being adopted by intelligent
civilizations more advanced than our own
an urban legend in the astronomical
community states that the infamous below
taste void is so dark because it's being
caused by a galactic civilization
consuming stars and galaxies around it a
huge rate though this is incredibly
unlikely whether you believe in any of
these controversial theories or not
there are estimated to be up to 100
octillion stars in the observable
universe that's one with 29 zeros after
it it's likely that if we are one of
many intelligent races in the universe
some star somewhere is currently or has
previously been harvested with Dyson
structure leaning engineering of course
any race capable of pulling such an
achievement off would have originated on
a much
more material rich planet than our own
so from our perspective it's not really
the best way we could colonize the Milky
Way galaxy and given the sheer material
requirements it's very likely that our
stereotypical view of a Dyson Sphere
doesn't exist but this doesn't rule out
the likelihood of similar alternatives
elsewhere in this enormous universe does
this mean we should rethink the
Kardashev scale Dyson structures have
become synonymous with type 2
civilizations
well maybe not the scale itself as the
three landmark milestones are still
basic principles of growth but perhaps
we should stop being so stubborn when it
comes to the methods we assume a
spacefaring civilization would use in
order to get off their planet life is
beautiful and life is weird maybe
somewhere in our universe some ingenious
race has done the impossible and
harvested an entire star but maybe
somewhere there is a race that has moved
across their galaxy without it we will
just have to wait and see how our race
evolved to get a better idea of the
challenges ahead
all we can do in the meantime is look to
the sky and watch the Sun Rise on our
own curious planetary society and with
that thank you very much for watching
and as ever don't forget to reach for
the stars
you
