Wow Marshall, giving me alot to think about for sure. Do like the idea of
making everything artificial from the get go and not go for a naturally
occuring star and build a sphere around it.
Heat, can it be used to correct gravitational problems and like? How to mask
it as natural or not really care?
Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: "Marshall Gatten" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2005 8:23 PM
Subject: Re: [world-create] Re: [gurps] Dyson Sphere Construction - Book
Writing ideas
> >Yes, to true about heat, got to get rid of it someplace, but true, if I
have
> >3 mile deep soil, then it speaks I have 3 mile deep or close to, oceans?
> >Oceans are great heat sinks?
>
>
>
>
> Oceans are great heat sinks, but the heat still accumulates. Eventually,
> unless there's a way to get the heat out, the oceans will boil away.
> (This would happen after all life in the sphere died of starvation since
> all the plants would have died of overheating.) The energy must go
> somewhere. If you somehow manage to create a perfectly insulated Dyson
> sphere, then the very best you could hope for would be for the entire
> energy of the star to eventually be evenly distributed throughout the
> enclosure. The good news is that if your insulation is truly perfect and
> the sphere big enough, then you could maintain a perfect 78 degree room
> temperature forever after the star dies out. (Of course, you'd have to
> somehow keep the star from exploding, and the sphere would have to be
> far, far, far, far, far bigger than any Dyson sphere I've ever heard of
> being proposed. And in a sphere that big, everybody would freeze to
> death waiting for the temperature to rise to that room temperature mark.)
>
> So the energy MUST be allowed to somehow vent in a controlled manner.
>
> I'm coming into this thread late, and haven't had the opportunity to
> read much of the earlier posts to it, but I'm assuming that what you are
> going after is a Dyson sphere that is cold on the outside so that it
> doesn't give off radiation allowing it to be detected.
>
> A civilization even remotely considering the real possibility of
> building a Dyson sphere is one with a lot of technology that we can't
> possibly begin to imagine today. We would be like cavemen to them.
> Imagine showing a supermarket door to a caveman. It's magic! It opens
> when you approach! And you can see through it even though it feels like
> smooth rock! Amazing! Show a pocket calculator to Isaac Newton. He'll
> know it to be a device of God. (Or possibly Satan.)
>
> So, when you look at the "impossibility" of a cold, hidden Dyson sphere
> you are limiting yourself to how we would build it today. How would a
> Neanderthal build an automobile?
>
> The fact is, that to be "realistic" about what such a society will be
> like, you would have to write such outlandish stuff that people of today
> would never label it "science fiction". It would be purely fantasy. I
> believe it was Arthur C. Clark (or possibly Isaac Asimov) who said that
> any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from
> magic by the uninitiated.
>
> That gives you two roads to take: Write about it as if it's magic and
> explain it away as super-advanced technology, or don't include anything
> that we think is impossible today but stretch the theories of today as
> far as you can without breaking the laws of physics. Going the first
> route, it will be unreadable claptrap even though it's likely to be
> closer to the truth. Going the second route it will be engaging and
> interesting, but wholly unbelievable by anybody who realizes how magical
> technology of such a civilization would seem. Most go the second route,
> since most readers in the target audience don't realize that we're still
> in a stone age compared to the characters we're reading about in such a
> setting.
>
> So, along that second route, how about something like this:
>
> Having mastered Zero Point Energy (the energy available in the subatomic
> vacuum between every empty point in space), the civilization who wants
> to hide does so by first constructing a perfectly insulated empty sphere
> in a cold region of space and then igniting an artificial star of
> customizable size (using zero point energy) in the middle of it after
> all the access points have closed. This means that they've moved
> everybody in who will ever come in. They'd have to live inside heated
> ships/buildings while they wait for the heat to build up. (Actually, the
> biggest wait would be waiting for everybody to get in and for the access
> points to close. Once the star is ignited, the whole sphere will heat up
> in less than a week if your artificial star is comparable to a natural
> one.) Once the heat inside the sphere is great enough, you turn the star
> off and terraform the inner surface using the energy that you've already
> put into the sphere with the artificial star. As a truly closed system,
> you never run out of energy so you never need a recharge.
>
> Notice that this whole thing stinks of a perpetual motion machine.
> That's because you can never have a truly closed system which is why you
> can never have a perpetual motion machine. But we're talking about a
> society that has access to zero point energy, and the applications of
> that are boundless so maybe they can truly find a perfect insulation.
>
> You still have the problem of reflected energy off the outer surface,
> but a civilization that could do all the above should have no problem
> absorbing that energy into the sphere. After all, we can already make
> stealth jets that absorb radar, so stealth technology that prevents all
> reflection should be pretty easy to a civilization like this one. That
> would actually cause a net-gain over time of energy, and it would
> eventually have to be vented.
>
> Which brings us to the next challenge: How to vent excess energy without
> emitting heat.
>
> This should actually be pretty easy for a civilization like this one.
> All they need to do is open a wormhole inside one of their labs that
> leads to some distant part of space. Vent all your heat through that,
> and you're all set. In fact, what an interesting weapon system... Maybe
> you don't turn off the star after all. Maybe you allow it to keep
> burning so that you can build up concentrations of heat which you then
> vent periodically by opening wormholes to the planets populated by your
> enemies. Witnessing one of these wormholes would be like seeing a
> spontaneous explosion of energy. Even if you realized you were seeing
> one end of a wormhole, there would be no way to trace where the other
> end is, and it could be anywhere in the universe. Even if you somehow
> managed to enter it before it collapsed and somehow traverse it without
> being torn to subatomic bits, you still wouldn't know where you are
> because you'd be inside the perfectly insulated sphere and no
> information from outside could get in (for example, to get a star fix).
>
> All of this should be theoretically possible according to our current
> understanding of physics. But it would take a much more advanced
> understanding of physics to actually implement it. So it seems to be a
> pretty happy medium between treating technology as the magic it will
> truly appear to be and treating it as if there have been no advances in
> the next million years.
>
> Of course, it still reads like fantasy and could hardly be considered
> "hard science fiction", but it all depends on what you're going for.
>
> So what would this giant stealth-enabled sphere look like? It wouldn't
> look like anything. Even standing on its outer surface looking down at
> it under your feet you wouldn't be able to see it because it reflects
> nothing. It would be like standing on a void. Through a telescope, you'd
> see nothing. No Hawking radiation (like a black hole gives off),
> nothing. It would only be detectable by the fact that it would eclipse
> the things it passes in front of. And, considering it's huge size, that
> alone would make it pretty easily detectable by an astronomer who knows
> what to look for. ("Oh look: Alpha Centauri just disappeared for an
> hour. A stealth sphere must have passed between us.") Actually,
> watching two stars get eclipsed by it and noting its transversal time on
> each, you would get a very accurate figure of its angular size and its
> velocity. Track it for six months so that you can triangulate its actual
> position using the parallax of your own orbit around your sun and you
> can even find out exactly how far away and how big it is. And then no
> amount of stealth will be able to hide you. (You can't change course
> without emitting something, which creates all kinds of problems of it's
> own, but I'll leave those aside for now.)
>
> So, you'd need to place it in a very opaque region of space with lots
> and lots of dust that distant telescopes can't see through anyway. Then
> there's no point from which to witness the eclipse. But then you also
> have a dramatically increased problem of erosion of your outer surface.
> You also have the problem of the sphere's own gravitational pull causing
> to be covered with reflective dust. In fact, it would eventually
> accumulate a crust heavy enough to collapse the whole thing entirely.
> How long that would take depends on how strong the material is, how
> massive the sphere is, and the amount of matter in its region of space.
> Even in an empty region where it is subject to the eclipse problem, it
> will still eventually build up reflective dust over the eons. So it
> needs to be self cleaning. Perhaps whatever mechanism absorbs otherwise
> reflected light can also absorb these particles. They will eventually
> have to be vented, though, because accumulating them will increase the
> mass of the sphere and the problem will get worse over time. So now you
> have a second weapon system: Open the wormhole to your enemy's planet
> and dump enough space dust on them that they all choke to death on it.
> (Heh, that's a kinda funny in a sick and twisted way.) Or, open that
> same wormhole into their sun and dump enough matter into it to cause
> their sun to collapse. Cool.
>
> I've been thinking more about that problem of not being able to change
> course. That's a non-trivial issue. In a perfectly insulated system,
> there's no way to know where you are or what's going on outside. And
> even if you allow enough leakage to obtain that information, how do you
> act on it? If you find out you're headed towards a star, you need to
> change course. How do you do that without emitting? My first thought was
> opening a wormhole nearby and dumping energy into it to push you away
> from the exterior end of the hole. But your perfectly absorbent outer
> surface will thwart that because it will absorb the energy that hits it
> instead of reflecting it and allowing itself to be pushed by the energy
> reflection. Here's a wild idea: Open a wormhole to a location relatively
> nearby and then send an artificial black hole through the wormhole. Be
> sure that it is unstable enough to dissipate before it sucks you in. It
> pulls you towards itself and then dissipates before you get there. If
> you manufacture the black holes quickly enough and have adequate control
> over the destination end of the wormhole, you could have a constant pull
> going. I'm not sure if physics would allow even a tiny black hole to
> traverse a wormhole, but that's a pretty cool thought. I think I'll call
> it the Suck Drive. :)
>
> Activation of the Suck Drive would be detectable by the dissipation of
> the black holes, but it would take prolonged use for it to reveal what
> side of the black holes you are on and what your new heading is.
>
> Anyway, I've already typed far longer than I'd intended and probably
> bored more people to sleep than I intended, so I'll stop there. :)
>
> Marshall
>
> P.S. "Suck Drive" Heh.
>
>
>
>
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