The Fermi Paradox: Searching For Dyson Spheres

[@garyweston3269]

I had the fortune of meeting professor Dyson at Harvard Square Cambridge. I was in my way to lectures on exoplanets by himself and Dr David Charbonneau. Prof Dyson was lost. I recognized him. Then we walked together and conversed as I took him to his lecture. He invited me to the front of the lecture hall to sit. It was fantastic. Afterward Charbonneau and I conversed for quite a while as well. Quite a day, interesting chats.

[@Zurround]

It was such a damned honor for him to be mentioned on an episode of Star Trek Next. Gen. Even if his idea was different than the one in the episode and even though someone else came up with the idea at an even earlier time its still damned awesome to be mentioned on that show. I want to meet LARRY NIVEN because I am also fascinated by RING WORLD. To be honest I think ring worlds are MORE realistic than Dyson's sphere. It would require less material, it would be possible to have day/night cycles (the inner ring) and you would not need the science fiction version of artificial gravity. The rotation would be centrifugal force which is just as good as gravity for people.

[@joz6683]

I think that most people don't realise that at the point in history that Fermi asked this question, a large number of people believed in an eternal universe, so Fermi's Paradox was much sharper and more problematic than is understood today. So with our updated models that we are just at the beginning of the history of the universe. So the absence of intelligence life at present is I don't think is as big a problem. Thanks for another thought-provoking video.

[@bassmanjr100]

It is an enormous problem. We appear to be alone in the galaxy and perhaps alone in the universe. Why? Something is very flawed in our thinking about evolution, the cosmos, or both.

[@djdrack4681]

I don't know that 'beginning of history' is the correct term. Look at Hadrian epoch for Earth and before it, and the timeline of when bacterial life emerged. It was pretty fast seemingly, but the problem of a dataset of 1 is we don't know where we are compared to a mean in a larger set. Even [hypothetical] parallel universes (and Earths); how many took longer to start life, how many were faster, how many never had it take hold...or maybe even completely die off, only to start up again in 100mil years after the inhospitable environment stabilized. The issue for us is observational data: our observations inherently have a bias in time. That bias= the fact that something farther away is older, not how it is at present. Not that big an issue within maybe 10k-1mil ly; but going further beyond that and it hard to say that the situation is 'accurate'. REMEMBER: homo spp have only existed for approx 2mil years; biological humans for 200k or so. We've gotten were we are now in only 2mil years (as a genus) 200k (as a species). Same as the Earth developing life and observation bias when you have dataset of 1: even in parallel Earths could we have developed faster, slower. etc. 190k years of Homo sapiens history they were quite primitive minus some fire/stone tool use. No way to know when verbal language started (lost to time) but maybe we've been speaking for 20-30k years in complex language (so 20k pre Mesopotamia's oldest stuff), maybe 50k years in primitive verbal language forms. Just guesses, but I'd bet it was a while before written language took hold. Certainly it was AFTER the 2nd 'out of Africa' migration circa 120k bce, otherwise all the evidence wouldn't be pointing towards a area around the Russian steppe to India when you look at language evolution vs migrational/dna history. POINT: I'd sort of expect that there are a bit more optimal planets out there for life to develop...a bit less water (maybe 40-50% surface max), 75%-125% Earth Gravity, a little colder (colder > hotter) with temps maxing at 25-40c (50-70f) and maybe bottoming at -50 to -25c (-100 to -50f) regularly during winters outside tropical zones. Colder generally = slower metabolism == longer lifespans. While longer lived generations may initially mean slower evolution: I'd say it'd be important when complex, semi-intelligent life evolves. Lifespans regularly of 100-400yrs is preferrable from evolutionary standpoint to 15-75yrs on Earth (when looking at Chimps to elephants to humans to whales etc). It allows 'smarter' decision making, cause-effect pattern recognition needed to understand things like edible vs poison plants, good toolmaking vs not; ppl living longer to 'lead' building, research, experiments etc. I don't think a dyson sphere/swarm is going to be anything but a BWC structure...Why build 1 swarm when you can make 100s of millions of Oneils and other structures, full single-layer matrioska worlds around all your solar systems planets/moons (for extracting/using them), etc. IF you can build a dyson anything you can build actual planets; it means you can do whatever, and outside of digital civilization tendencies most would probably spread out at least a bit...maybe 100-1000 solar systems (which is microscopic compared to the 200bil in just our galaxy)

[@andrewruiz7894]

I think we keep thinking that our vision of what other civilizations look like isn't what we think. We put ourselves out there. We're looking for star trek types. We just don't know

[@Eyes_of_Oryx]

We are late. Not early.

[@ameyskulkarni]

​@@letoiiatryda Isaac already explained why Dark Forest is unrealistic tbh

[@Rabbi_Weasel]

I never had bedtime stories as a kid... As a 30 year old man you're my hero. Thanks for being you Isaac!

[@pyropulseIXXI]

This isn't totally creepy or anything

[@Rabbi_Weasel]

@@pyropulseIXXI Yeah the phrasing is a little off :D

[@5izzy557]

@@Rabbi_Weasel Not at all, I think it's sweet

[@bravo_01]

As a 30 year old myself , I can confirm .

[@stankythecat6735]

I’m 46 and feel the same

[@greggweber9967]

8:35 Nearby. A village has farms, and there are farms associated with nearby villages doubling the distance. What used to be farms become settlements, then villages, towns, and then cities. With each growth, there's a greater distance based on the greater number of people to be fed.

[@uafc1]

But stars are oceans of distance away from each other, and nothing really that useful in between. So, "no matter how big the city of Los Angeles gets, it will never overlap with Sydney". A few light years away doesn't sound like much but is a ridiculous distance.

[@wpelfeta]

I've always wondered if it's because Dyson Spheres are *not* the ultimate power sources. I mean, it's huge and nonportable. Maybe it'll turn out that there is better more self-contained, portable sources of power.

[@icecold9511]

The thing is that the power source already exists, with a gas tank that lasts billions of years. While a Dyson's sphere is unlikely, a swarm is very practical.

[@lennoxshepherd3905]

would you even need them to be portable?

I agree. Concept of a Dyson sphere/swarm is like looking on pictures how people of Victorian era were imagining life in the year 2000.

[@icecold9511]

@@lennoxshepherd3905 As he said, you could refuel the sun and let it fuse heavy elements for you to get thousands of planets worth of resources. A swarm would be more practical to build, but the efficiency of a sphere.....

[@seanhewitt603]

Vacuum state batteries...

[@TMAC_burninator]

What effect would a Dyson swarm have on the outward pressure a star exerts on its surroundings? Is it like throwing pebbles into a river? Could blocking above a certain percentage of a star with a swarm have a negative impact on that outward pressure such that it would be undesirable for anyone to build a Dyson swarm above that percentage?

[@MrPokerblot]

I’m sure they would be engineered to make use of nearly if 100 % of the energy. So the effect would be negligible as there is hardly any energy missfire to cause collateral etc.

[@anxez]

​@@MrPokerblot 100% efficient light power is more mystical than a greater power source existing honestly

[@Kenshkrix]

@@MrPokerblot Our sun's solar wind pushing against the interstellar medium produces what we call the Heliosphere which may help protect our system from the nearby galactic environment. I believe the question is more about whether a dyson swarm would deteriorate the heliosphere and whether or not there's a point at which this has negative consequences.

[@MrPokerblot]

@@anxez yes, I see the logic in what you say completely, beat in mind though I did say “nearly” and we are talking completely hypothetically and hypothetically speaking if we are talking about something that a thousand or more years in advance to oour own civilisation there is no way to know that power they have to harness energy.

[@MrPokerblot]

@@Kenshkrix If a civilisation has the power and knowledge to extract energy from a star using a Dyson swarm. They sure as hell would know about how to also counter-engineer the means of dealing with this problem. One would assume 🤔…. Interesting thought though. Maybe this would be the points of location to build the swarm 🤔

[@OpreanMircea]

20:47 i never thought of things like that, man this opens my eyes to slot of how the universe really is, a bunch of hot matter, mostly plasma

[@cannonfodder4376]

Another informative Thursday video. Good work Isaac and crew.

[@Pertusetian]

We were in Tel'Afar together, I was running that big satellite dish by the RTOC. Been watching you for awhile now, well done!

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

Good to remake your acquaintance :)

[@UpliftedCapybara]

I’m always down for more Fermi paradox videos!

[@innerstrengthcheck]

Just in time for bed! No better way to relax into sleep than with cool futurism :)

[@waynewilliamson4212]

was viewing a james webb article about distant cradle of stars and one of the images of m74 shows an "empty" circle about 50 percent out from the center on the lower right hand side. It occurred to me that an expanding civilization that was creating dyson spheres would look like a hole in a galaxy, kind of like this one.

[@JorgeLausell]

I start with considering that spacefaring Means orbital spin gravity GigaStructures. Multiplanetary is a red herring. We'll be multi-solar before we're multiplanetary in the sense of completely terraformed.This understanding helped focusing on sequentially learning how to build larger McNeil Cylinders. For sure Orbital Towers on Luna & Mars. Maybe Orbital Rings on Luna & Mars too. Settlements on both surfaces. Initial primary function is to locate, mine, refine resources to be lifted into orbit for use in construction on orbiting shipyards building fleets of orbiting spin gravity structures. The first gen spin gravity structures will be for the extended stays in orbit we need to learn how to live in space. We'll build fleets of them serviced with additional fleets of individual crewed rocket ships. Most spaceships would be manufactured in space & designed to never go to earth. We'd use a separate feet of reentry vehicles of various types. Use cargo Starships to ship up completed sections of spaceships to be assembled in space. We make the first few spin gravity orbital space stations, now, as we build the spacedocks. The Ships we use to go to Luna & Mars we assemble in space, Starship 2.0. They never pay a gravity tax. It'll take, with effort and planning, 20 years to create large fleets. To have a network of manufacturing orbiting spacedocks. Step by step get to a yearly construction run rate of smaller McNeil Cylinders in the 100s. These would be built so efficiently, so quickly, that we'll overbuild. We'll have ones that are sized to take generations to fill. We'll make them by the fleet. There're ways to build in McNeil Cylinders that give rise to a the ability to build, in what in earthly terms would seem like inhumane, density. They give access to continental sized habitats, placed in orbits, around our inner planets, various L-poins, in large void pockets in The Belt, and beyond. It'll take generations to fill up the ships we can make in the next 30 years. Maybe 100s. This, our first major excursion into Our Solar System, can take 1000 years and we'll number into astronomical digits. And we'll mask it all well too! The biggest threat we face from space aliens is from any generational fleets that happen by. Then it depends on their motivation. FTL civilizations, if there are any, must be able to create weapons that make ours seem silly. Completely at their mercy! As for Fermi. I'd say finding Sol & figuring out we're populated by intelligent beings, from another galaxy is small. Spotting our Phase 1 Spacefaring Culture using our level of sensors from within our galaxy isn't going to be a walk in the park either. Consider we're only just getting to be able to measure the most blunt of indicators as of yet. Fermi. My consideration of the dilemma went: Looking for radio waves? We've only been making ones able to leave the planet for less than 100 years. Given that it takes another 50 to figure out how to mask them, that's a 150 light years of an ever thinning, at 1/d2, radio waves- bubble. Given we've only been looking-listening for 100 years or so, there could be advanced spacefaring civilizations within that 150 lightyear bubble and we'd not know. There are some 15k Stars within that reach of us. Which is just a tiny bit of our galaxy here.

[@SkylerLinux]

Speaking of Kardashev Scale, I think a better way to look at it is to say that each level is a cap. So K1 is upto a planets solar budget, K2 is upto the full output of a Star, and K3 is upto a Galaxy. Leaving us a K1 as we can't get more than any planet can get, if we get into space and start building a Dyson Swarm would jump us up to K2 Etc.

[@lonniepetty6341]

Always enjoy your show, as you always seem to address all of my misconceptions on whatever subject you happen to be talking about.

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

Thanks Lonnie!

[@haydenwalton2766]

@@isaacarthurSFIA brilliant work you do Isaac - thank you

[@TicTocRobotSnot]

Just finished listening to P.E. Rowe’s KZbin short story about building a super telescope. It was fun experiencing your new video together this morning.

[@Zurround]

I am totally fascinated by almost inconceivably huge megastructures like RING WORLD (Larry Niven) and Dyson's Sphere and Alderson Disk. My absolute favorite Star Trek Next Gen. story RELICS had a DYSON'S SPHERE. Data said that it had approximately as much inhabitable living area as 250 million Class M Planets. I made some arbitrary assumptions: 1. I went with the 250 million even though it was probably an approximation, rare with that many zeroes to be exact. 2. I assumed that Data meant AVERAGE class M planet since they very in size. 3. I decided to count EARTH as the "average" class M planet since its all I have to go with. I am guessing that percentage wise Earth would only be a tiny bit bigger or smaller than average. 4. I decided to assume the same POPULATION DENSITY as Earth since its all I have to work with. 5. I assumed the people would be similar enough to Earth people to have the same basic needs for food, drink and other supplies. Then I did some FUN MATH. I calculated how much of certain supplies are needed on Earth each day then used my calculator to multiply that by 250 million. For example, I calculated that if there was a drink as popular to the inhabitants of that world as COKE COLA is on Earth that on an average day as much of that soda would need to be produced to satisfy that world's population would be greater than the amount of water in the GREAT LAKES bordering the state of Michigan. In only a few hours more coffee would need to be brewed world wide than could fill Lake Tahoe, which is the largest lake in 2 neighboring states as it crosses the state line between Nevada and California. Other bizarre things to think about are that an ocean the size of the pacific would be like a pond on that world and a city 100 times the size and population of New York City would be about as significant as the apartment complex I live in would seem on Earth. You might have a giant forest where the walk from one end to the other (a lot of trees) would be greater distance than the distance from Earth to moon.

[@pineapplepenumbra]

"You might have a giant forest where the walk from one end to the other (a lot of trees) would be greater distance than the distance from Earth to moon." Having watched many Isaac Arthur videos, I, too, have considered what megastructures could be like, including such mind boggling concepts of forests, deserts and cities. However, I wonder whether, with so much space, especially with advanced transport and communications, if cities as we know them would just never be built? Also, they could have huge, very wide, very fast trains that never stop (apart for maintenance and, possibly, refueling), where one takes another train that gets up to speed in order to line up for boarding.

[@Zurround]

@@pineapplepenumbra I have another interesting statistic and the math was really easy to do. I read that the average person needs to drink half a gallon of water per day to be healthy. Our world has approx. 8 billion people so needs 4 billion gallons of drinking water per day. A world with a quarter billion times the population would need maybe 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons of drinking water per day and about 365,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons of drinking water per year. To say nothing of bathing or watering garden or cooking etc. in ONE YEAR they would need more water JUST FOR DRINKING, try to imagine this next time you drink a cup of water, than the total amount of water on Earth. All oceans, rivers, lakes ice caps etc. Imagine the oceans all being dried up just to produce drinking water (it would not work out that way obviously but that is what it averages out to). I liked your idea about giant trains. They also might have space ships that travel above the atmosphere but far enough from the sun in the center. Maybe if you needed to travel to a place several light minutes away they would just have teleport stations set up? You might be right about not needing big CITIES but damn, you could have a city comparable to Coruscant in Star Wars and in that world it would just be a dime a dozen type place. I wish there was more science fiction about Dyson's Spheres.

[@Zurround]

@@pineapplepenumbra I wish Isaac arthur would revisit his megastructure topic and talk about what life might be like in such a place. Years ago I made a vow never again to read a Star Trek novel because they are a huge disorganized mess of continuity (they actually contradict EACH OTHER, like the metaphor of too many cooks ruining the soup) and are not at all official canon. But I am considering reading the Star Trek Next Gen novel DYSON'S SPHERE where they go back to reexplore (I read the BACK COVER) and maybe even read the novelization of RELICS. I may need to make an EXCEPTION to my personal rule against reading Star Trek books.

[@pineapplepenumbra]

@@Zurround "I wish there was more science fiction about Dyson's Spheres." I would like to write one, but can't think of an interesting plot where the location would be relevant. Some people like living in cities, so they may well still exist, but just with a lot more space for people*. Also, there might be different cities and regions where there are more of a different species of human, or even aliens of different types. * I was reading a Quora reply about how average ancient Romans lived, and someone said that they lived in Taipei, and it was going that way due to the ludicrously high rent/mortgage costs. Very few people had enough room even for a table, or full sized fridge, but just had mini fridges and a hotplate, so would go off to eat in public places, etc.

[@Zurround]

@@pineapplepenumbra Your comment about other SPECIES got me thinking. It has not YET happened on Earth (ever since the Neanderthals went extinct) but if you had a world that big the DNA would spread out so much that over time the people might evolve into different subspecies of human. If too much time went by 2 people who lived too far apart might not be able to have children together. I have heard that if we start colonizing other planets that it could cause speciation eventually. A strange thing to think about.

[@uafc1]

My theory is that there is one, their original, and we haven't seen it yet because there are 400 billion stars on this galaxy alone. They only built it because it's convenient to use it when you have it on your backyard. But after that, they didn't bother travelling ridiculous distances light years away for the other stars because they found how to create that energy themselves. The sun burns hydrogen and helium to create that energy, space between stars is composed of 70% hydrogen and 29% helium. So, if you know the formula, then you don't need to travel to get more. The ingredients are right outside your star and you will never ran out of those ingredients because the star is always moving. It's always about efficiency. We could mine for resources in Antartica or the depths of the ocean but we don't because it's not efficient. Travelling light years to get more energy isn't efficient either. People don't grasp how ridiculous that distance is. 4 years and a half just for light to reach? Just think about it. In one second, light travels the distance you would cover if you traveled around Earth 7.5 times. We wouldn't even be crowded here either. You can fit 32 earths in the distance between earth and the moon, and you can fit 43.000 moons between the sun and earth. From the sun to Neptune, you can fit 1.291.770 moons!! And that's only in a straight line, space is 3 dimensional. So, yeah, plenty of room. All colonies were made to supply the main settlement, and colonies can't be "light years away" for that reason. We will sends probes to study each star in the galaxy like we study now Antartica and the depths of the ocean, but we are not going there to mine Dysonpheres. It's just not efficient!

[@abnormica]

Am I the only one who gives a thumbs up before the video starts? I've never had to remove it yet?

[@Junksaint]

I wonder if it affects the/your algorithm

[@seanhewitt603]

I give him thumbs up too. He is inquisitive and eloquent.

[@OpreanMircea]

It saves a lot of time

[@jimstiles26287]

Nope.

[@cptbutt3571]

Me

[@SarevokRegor]

Your restated constraints on the Dyson dilemma is now only that 1) People like being close to each other 2) Even the most amazing technology looks like a dyson swarm provided it is even slightly inefficient.

[@0x0404]

I remember seeing some image of a region of space that was "dark" and then an infrared of that section of space being lit up. So those several dozen stars(which were all close by) were all emitting only heat.

[@charlesjmouse]

Always excellent, and a reasonable conclusion: If the universe looks empty it's because it probably is... but that's not a reason to stop looking.

[@JohnJohansen2]

11:26 Although small red dwarfs are notoriously unstable.

[@christophe5756]

Mister President, Brother Soldier, I absolutely love it when you “go there” and you sure as heck “went there”. This one was mind-stretching, and boundary-pushing, while “The Habitat Compendium” was Profound beyond words to a degree that it could possibly shape the direction of our civilization and those that descend from ours. What’s the difference between the two episodes? -You already know: The Music.

[@tturi2]

homestly, what would it take for us to make a genuinely liveable oneal cylinder? economically, politically (rip), resources, transportation, et cetera.

[@robertmiller9735]

A generation or so experience building smaller spinning space stations, plus a major economic incentive.

[@algorithmgeneratedanimegir1286]

​@@robertmiller9735 Land.

[@robertmiller9735]

@@algorithmgeneratedanimegir1286 Sure, but that's a little vague. I see three funding possibilities: "Elysium" (haven for the rich, hardly the best choice but maybe a start), socialist-style government project (very unlikely), and housing for a lot of people already living in space.

[@Extra.Medium]

Maybe "complete" Dyson swarms just take an incredibly long time to form. We seem to imagine someone setting out to make one all at once and getting it done fairly quickly but I'm not sure a civilization that jumped right to it would even be able to use all of that energy that soon. A civilization that's still primarily on one planet or even in one solar system likely can't use the full power of a star for the same reason my house can't use the full power of a nuclear power plant. If a swarm is composed of a mix of habitats, reflectors and various infrastructure then it might not happen all at once. Those pieces will go up as needed at whatever pace naturally develops and unless a civilization is particularly focused, it could be a lot more than a couple centuries or even millennia to really get a good cloud going on one star. A shipyard large enough to fully enclose massive colony ships being powered by multiple 100x100km reflectors would still just look like a few motes of dust if you backed up enough to see the big picture, right?

[@physics_hacker]

The problem is that once you get the process of building one going, it gets exponentially easier. The immense amounts of power you get from it make it really easy to build up the swarm even more, which allows you to do even more, and so on. It's a feedback loop that perpetuates its own growth, so I think the "short" timescales we hear about to make one are not really the result of being in a hurry at all, just that the process of building one makes finishing it easier. If a civilization collectively wanted a full one ASAP they could probably do it even faster than the timelines we hear about, it's just hard to get that much willpower for it.

[@algorithmgeneratedanimegir1286]

​@@physics_hacker No. A Dyson sphere isn't really that efficient, so it's more likely that they would build the other stuff all before it. Besides, why block out the son to your homeworld?

[@Alexander_Kale]

problem is, even if it takes a million years to build one, while this would be an insane timeframe for a civ, it would be a mere moment in terms of intergalactic time. So eve IF it takes that long, there should still be a few around. And once you have one, you probably need second fairly soon...

[@cosmictreason2242]

Isaac has already done the math. It takes less than 10,000 years to go from Adam and Eve to a full dyson

[@0mn1vore]

What about beaming your waste heat off in specific directions, using reflectors? Doesn't reduce the amount of waste heat, but does make it far less likely you'd be seen directly -- the same way we see far fewer blazars than quasars even though they're both the same thing, the only difference being that blazars are aimed directly at us. It's far less likely anyone would notice you, but if they do, they'll *really* notice.

[@lt5932]

similar thought or transfer energy via quantum entaglement or something

[@electroflame6188]

Ok, but why would you bother doing that?

[@0mn1vore]

@@electroflame6188 - Good question. I was only thinking how it could be done, not why. Maybe they're shy?

[@lt5932]

@@electroflame6188 the motive is to reduce your likely hood of being seen. Stealth is a good defense. Even after they know you are there via gravity. A reflective shroud would limit their info during a strategic advance, and limit their ability to listen to your communications. Someone invading would definitely be listening to your broadcasts as they approach. To know your positioning, economy, tech, factions, beliefs,etc . Mainly you're doing it to deprive a potential enemy of as much information as possible it doesn't have to completely hide you to be an effective defense.

[@benb3316]

A while back - when you posted your voids thing, I had a question: This relates to the 5th part- Let's assume the Bootes Void is full of galaxies like normal space. I'm not arguing that, just assuming for the thought not the arguement. Let's say that region is full of "Black Galaxies" covered with Dyson Swarms and only they maybe didn't yet get to the 60-ish galaxies in it where there should be millions or at least thousands of them? Light passing through it IS dimmed I've read a few places... Q1 - How much energy could they get? Q2 - What could they do with that much energy?

[@nickcaruso]

The Heechee books by Poul Anderson and the Inhibitor books by Alaistair Reynolds have some fun takes on these ideas.

[@descuddlebat]

I propose a hypothesis: Aliens never built a Dyson sphere because they couldn't agree on whether it'd count as fusion power or solar power and which grants would therefore apply

[@algorithmgeneratedanimegir1286]

Government holding back infrastructure with bureaucracy is on-brand. Sounds very plausible indeed. I'm not even joking, people are just assuming we'll sort out those kinds of issues because "FUTURE!!!" but what if we never do? I mean, why would you work together with your whole species when you can instead go off into the middle of nowhere and have a high tech colony with billions of people just like you?

[@Enward834]

Pretty funny lol. What were the burocratic alien from hitch hickers guide called? I picture that lol

[@matthewkemp594]

Can you imagine writing up an Environmental impact statement for a Dyson sphere around a star with an inhabited system? Actually, that might explain why we never see them... they lacked sufficient forest worlds to file the paperwork...

[@pineapplepenumbra]

@@Enward834 They were called Vogons. I much preferred the ones from the TV series over the film. Even though its special effects were budget, it had a charm and atmosphere to it that I felt the film lacked. The radio series, books, TV series and films were all different. I have only heard some of the radio series, but should try to find it somewhere.

[@GhostOnHiatus]

its like every minute and a half you give my logic new concepts to work with

[@wouterdevlieger1002]

Back of the napkin math says that if you want your Dyson swarm power stations 1000 km apart to avoid hindering each other with gravity and blocking each other's sunlight, it would take 1.8 billion Manhattan sized (10 by 2 miles) power plants powering a civilization around a sun-sized star, spread over 2000 circles, before the areas where all 2000 circles intersect (assuming you wouldn't invest in spreading those around), before it would cause a dip in visible light as big as an earth sized planet does (which we can't find easily in the data we have analyzed so far), with the extra thermal energy spread evenly and negligible to the star's own output. Plenty of space to hide for massive civilizations, and plenty of room for them to encounter drivers that would make adding more modules far less attractive than moving to other stars, where they again would be too faint to detect.

[@supplychainoperationsresearch]

oh algorithm gods! hear your servants' plea and spread this video!

[@srb20012001]

Applying the Copernican Principle, our technology (Kardachev Type 0.7) is average for a 13.8B year cosmogenesis. Therefore, it seems reasonable that distant galaxies may have Type 1 civilisations at the "present" proper time, mimicking our own development. However, we must realize that observing these distant galaxies also requires us viewing them in the distant past, well before the 13.8B-year epoch. Therefore it is unlikely we'll discover intelligent EM signatures from them, given their earlier perceived existence. It would take several more billion years from now for us to see a galaxy at its 13.8B-year epoch and observe Type 1 communication, much less Type 2 or 3.

[@EricEstesEleutherian]

I think virtual worlds become so much more compelling & cost-effective/energy-efficient that civilizations haven't needed more than 15% of their stars' energy for their needs. That & spacefaring species are still very rare. There may be a max of 15% dip in one star's luminosity per 100,000 galaxies. Pretty darn hard to find & not likely to detect any signals from them or expect them to try to send any. The next 100 years are going to be a trip.

[@Cosmosisification]

My love language is Arthur Isaac telling me to grab a drink and a snack for long videos and he didn't say that today I'm so sad 😭

[@olsondavid2]

At 5:09 this video shows what it calls black body emission curves of the sun and earth on the right side of the frame. Those are clearly not BB curves and look more like Gaussians. Apparently correct BB curves are shown on the left side of the frame, and the ones on the right are not BB curves.

[@mikelanzano3806]

OK now that I fully understand what Isaac is saying I will be listening constantly. I admit I had trouble figuring out his way of talking, but his content outways any effort in the listening. Liked and subscribed 👍♥️

[@htos1av]

IF, a sphere has ever been built, it no longer exists as the Webb would have seen it like an original GE spot light, in WWII, two feet from your face , as the IR heat signature from Dyson would be INSANE!!

[@samsamsamsamsamanilla5281]

With 99.8% of the total mass of the solar system locked up in the sun,with the .2% left is it possible to have enough mass to make a Dyson Swarm/ Sphere without farming other solar systems and farming the sun? Even if it was flattened to an atom thickness? Is there any math that you can suggest to figure this out?

[@Peoples_Republic_of_Cotati]

I am thinking an ideal place to situate a Dyson Swarm is at the gravitational-lense volumes. There colonies can watch the rest of the universe, interact with transient dark objects, and eventually rub up against extra solar Oort Clouds and colonize them.

[@somark28]

Honestly aliens are probably living in the centers of galaxies surrounded by black holes living forever by perpetually slowing down their perception of time. Those huge black holes in the centers of galaxy are just fuel tanks

[@GariFFUSA]

Finally the old Isaac Arthur worth watching.

[@theostickle2604]

Once again, another great, informative, and thought provoking video. Thank you Isaac. My civilization is 100 thousand years old. We have built dozens of world spheres around stars and hundreds of ring worlds around some of the thousands of planets we've terraformed and settled over the past 15,000 years. At this point you would call our technology "Clark Tech". We are 55,000 light years away, on the other side of the galactic core. Could the above scenario be a reason for us not "seeing" anything yet?

[@cosmictreason2242]

No. Because 55,000 ly is close enough to have seen their dysons by now. It only takes 10,000 years to get a substantially complete dyson, starting with only Adam and Eve.

[@theostickle2604]

@@cosmictreason2242 light travels only so fast. My civilization is only 15000 years old. It would take 55000 years for the reflection of our structures to reach you. The civilization is 15000yrs old, not the spheres, they're probably less than a thousand years old. If we blew up a star 100 light years away you wouldn't know for 100 years. I build a megastructure in space you won't know I begun until long after I finished. It a rhetorical question to remind us if a civilization rose up we wouldn't know after the light from there reaches us.

[@cosmictreason2242]

@@theostickle2604 you said it was 100,000 years old but whatever. You're begging the question of why a civ would've arisen now rather than in the preceding ten billion years, when it didn't have the same conditions as us. That's a major statistical problem with the paradox that Isaac has addressed before

[@theostickle2604]

@@cosmictreason2242 yes, you are right. The civilization is 100,000 years old (so is ours). They've been colonizing and building mega structures over the past 15,000 years. They are 55,000 light years away. At that distance, if they cities like ours, 20,000 years older then ours, we wouldn't know. That light is still traveling toward us. We started building maga structures only 15,000 years age, those light frequencies are still traveling toward us. When Beetlejuice explodes we won't know about it for decades.

[@cosmictreason2242]

@@theostickle2604 but positing that we haven't seen aliens because they arose at the same time as ours is arbitrary.

[@annoyed707]

What if the altered spectrum is deliberately varied so that the star looks more normal from some directions, such as the Galactic plane?

[@ctrsmithy]

Maybe it's just rare for intelligent species to reach for the stars, the people still in the rainforest seem pretty content.

[@Deridus]

Neccesity is the mother of invention, knowlege the father. The Sentinalese are stoneage but have iron-tipped arrows. This argues happenstance is the attraction between the two

[@Cryptech1010]

While some species and small pockets of humans may be content, humans overall are not that species. Humans have tried to explore or expand their territory every chance they get since the beginning of human history. Humans will never be content, they always want more, it's what has led to our worldwide success as a species

[@Deridus]

@@Cryptech1010 With a bit of luck we'll be off this rock soon. Once we are, nothing will stop us from becoming eternal. I really do not like having all of our eggs in one basket.

[@kregadeth5562]

Good point

[@kregadeth5562]

@@Cryptech1010 awesome

[@ghostdreamer7272]

A return to classic SFIA

[@Jaytheradical]

"Maybe there's some kind of star we think is natural but is actually artificial" Honestly I'm still side-eyeing pulsars, that is some suspicious solar shit if you ask me.

[@greggonzales8]

I love paradox videos 🥴🤤

[@mee4349]

Once we have checked the milky-way for life I guess it doesn't matter if life is abundant in other galaxies as communication and travel are impossible due to the light speed limit?

[@bassmanjr100]

We appear to be completely alone in the universe. Something is a miss with our understanding of evolution, the cosmos, or both.

[@Hysteresis11]

There is some (yet to be discovered/understood) property of the universe which permits only one technological consciousness within any observable volume of space-time.

[@boobah5643]

Well, no. Communication is doable, if slow, because we can resolve 'signals' from other galaxies. And physics allows for intergalactic travel, since you can use Shkadov Thrusters (or the more efficient variants) to take an entire solar system intergalactic.

[@virutech32]

Well the light speed-cosmic expansion limit only applies once you get further out. We can definitely communicate & travel to other nearby galaxies.

[@j-twd930]

We've always had the capacity to trawel interstellar, even without FTL, ever since nuclear bombs bombs were invented. See Project Orion. Obviously, such a project would not fly today (pun not intended!), but we can dream...

[@evepsyche]

has anyone ever thought that maybe the reason why we don't see dyson spheres is bc its kinda overkill? like they probably only need a big enough device (like maybe a super high tech solar panel) to power their entire planet just enough for everyone to use and not have too much energy surplus

[@cedriceric9730]

Its very low tech yes😂 Its very desperate

[@MrNote-lz7lh]

Nah. If they were the type to settle they would have never expanded in the first place. So if we do find such an alien civilization they'd be cavemen with their greatest tech being sticks and stones to handle predators. Except, of course, they'd be outcompeted by any subgroup of theirs with a mutation that make them more expansive.

[@damien3395]

Happy Arthursday, science enthusiasts.

[@TheSpiritBeaver]

Imagine thinking that extraterrestrial life uses technology we can comprehend. They can probably access ZPE or antimatter, fold space, create warp bubbles, communicate with something similar to subspace in star trek. There is likely a breakpoint in physics where the need for something like a dyson sphere is moot. The fermi paradox and kardashev scale fall apart when we start thinking outside our current comprehension of physics.

[@notahotshot]

Yep, science fantasy doesn't have to follow the laws of physics.

[@engelheim457]

Yup, a civilization capable of building such retro futuristic odd machinery, would surely find less awkard ideas than this, dark matter or better

[@luisostasuc8135]

A thing that has bugged me for a long time is the heat "problem." If heat is defined as energy that can't be used for powering something, then wouldn't being able to use energy we can't currently use be a way to prevent heat from escaping the system? One example of turning heat into energy is recent advancements in solar panel wavelength capture, since some panels can now use infrared radiation to generate power. Granted, this just pushes the heat down the line, but why is the assumption that eventually heat *must* be part of the equation?

[@skynet5828]

The emission of waste heat is a consequence of the laws of thermodynamics. Every time you convert one form of energy into another, you lose some of it as heat, which in turn increases the entropy of the universe.

[@Emanon...]

Assuming we're not among the first intelligent life out there, looking for Dyson spheres is based on our ideas of maximum energy creation for an advanced civilization. But what if the true demand is raw materials, not energy or there are easier/cheaper ways of generating vast amounts of energy. In that case, I think the idea of Dyson Spheres is cool, but probably not practical for a sufficiently advanced civilization. Just a thought.

[@MrNote-lz7lh]

Well if mass is what we want then starlifting stars would still be the right way to go.

[@CryptoNChill]

I agree with the explanation that we're looking for life in a drop of water within an ocean. Our observable universe is preposterously large to us, but a grain of sand in an endless desert

[@DG-mk7kd]

A civilization able to construct a basic dyson swarm would have ample power and technology to reach a neighboring star and repeat the process. A galaxy would therefore dysonate in less than about 100k years, practically a flashover, it would not be subtle.

[@greggweber9967]

As one learns and grows, they tend to keep the new fancy stuff while those further away fet last year's model. The only way y keep the old is that it works well enough and is hard to palm off to an ally far away. Same with power sources. Just because the newer is better doesn't mean that we should stop looking for the older powe= source.

[@JohnMiller-mmuldoor]

Top o’the mornin to ya Sir Isaac Arthur!

[@chadlynch1551]

Our own population growth seems to fall off dramatically the more technologically and economically advanced a culture they become. Most industrial nations have a below replacement birth rate now, and only grow via immigration from less advanced countries. If this phenomena continues as we advance further, and is fairly common among sentient species, wouldn't that mean the pressure to build something like a Dyson swarm would be less or practically absent? If your population is relatively small and steady, your energy needs are likely to be met with some fusion, fission, and perhaps some orbiting solar collectors. You're just not going to really need to tear apart half your solar system to create living space for your people and supply them with energy.

[@anxez]

I think there is another possibility of why no dyson spheres: They may be impossible to maintain.

[@calvingreene90]

What would make maintenance impossible?

[@DaFinkingOrk]

​@@calvingreene90The chaos of having so very many satellites (that are also solar sails), orbiting fairly close to a star? Inevitable fluctuations in the brightness and solar wind of the star would be a massive nuisance. It should be possible to make satellites that can correct for all this automatically and keep themselves stable for a very long time. But at some point, they will need reaction mass, or radiation will break an essential electronic component, or they will get hit by a piece of debris, etc. Then it will need repair or it will eventually cause a Kessler syndrome - even if that takes millions of years, we are talking in millions and billions of years on this topic. And having an automated repair fleet means that fleet still has the same issues as the first, so it's really not a solution. You need living intelligence (in any form including true AGI) to manage something like that I think - which is also something that can fail given enough time. Basically it's the enormous length of the time scales we're facing, imo.

[@algorithmgeneratedanimegir1286]

​@@DaFinkingOrk And to top it all of, it really isn't the "ultimate power source." You could get all the power you need through a plethora of more time efficient means.

[@Alexander_Kale]

@@DaFinkingOrk Why would a large number of satelites automatically lead to an unsustainable chaos? You build as many satelites as you can safely control per orbit. Said orbit can be as far out as earth itself, and whenever youfill up one orbit, you go in or out a couple hundred thousand miles for the next orbit. We know that objects can remain in a stable orbit without needing propellant for very, very long times, just look at earht, pluto, the comets, the objects in the oort cloud, what have you. Even if you do need to maneuver somewhat, large "sails" would be a plus, not a detriment. One could imagine doing something similar to the ISS, using the extra surface to literally sail the solar winds for small adjustments. Even if you have to stack the rings out with light minutes distances between one another to keep them safe, doesn't really matter, does it? You just do this for long enough, you will collect all the energy of the star no matter how far out you are or how low the satelite density is. Micrometeorites does ot seem to be an unsolveable problem either, unless you are somehow opposed to giving your repairfleet a couple of anti-asteroid lasers. Which, granted, might be the sticking point. ^.^

[@calvingreene90]

@@DaFinkingOrk Solar sails operating near a star just hanging stationary on a stream of photons it's just so hard to keep track of.

[@petersmythe6462]

Anyone with any knowledge of primate tool use and manufacture would have no difficulty determining that an arrowhead was artificial, and probably would have a very good idea exactly how it was made, and exactly what is ancient damage, what is modern damage, and what is modern forgery trying to mimic ancient damage or manufacturing processes to change the appearance of the item.

[@JasonCummer]

So where would be the best places to position searchers for Dysons. And what is in those locations?

[@Crushnaut]

How would you feed a Kugelblitz blackhole when the event horizon is smaller than a proton?

[@PantsuMann]

Would it be meta to use teleporters to send out the excess heat into another solar system to hide your own solar system?

[@cosmictreason2242]

If you could do that you would've been able to travel here already. No need to hide

[@petersmythe6462]

What if civilizations eventually start reflecting all of their waste heat into stellar mass black holes? Not necessarily even as a matter of stealth but of trying to remain compact without cooking themselves?

[@dariaahlm8963]

I really like you voice Arthur

[@OLDCHEMIST1]

An interesting video, as usual! I think although Dyson spheres might be logical they also could be extremely unlikely. Just judging the way all higher animals behave and especially the self-proclaimed intelligent species, us, the amount of collaboration for constructing any megastructure seems very, very unlikely. When you think of how much we fight one another as a species, working together would be incredibly difficult and would probably require some disaster which would make it even more unlikely. I think the tendency to "fragment" is totally natural and any alien species would be composed of many different groups vying for resources, so looking for Dyson spheres and swarms will probably be a fruitless occupation unless AI might build them.

[@Big.Ron1]

Cool! Its going to be a good night. When I turn off the lights and lay down tonight I get to become a little bit smarter before I sleep. Thank you!

[@nyyotam4057]

What about K1.5? You know, an AI civilization where the AIs reside in the Oort cloud around their home star, making their Oort cloud radiate IR and dumping their waste into their star, like what seem to happen around Przybylski's Star?

[@phillip6083]

Thermal energy cant escape a blackhole right?what about reverse hawkins radiation? If hr is based on entanglement could it not be used in reverse to move thermal energy into a singularity?

[@designsforutopia0.0]

When Isaac Arthur sais "Grab a drink and a snack". It is code language for grab a noteblock and a pen.😉

[@bradleyadams4496]

Precisely, the alien space when viewed through telescope in MOO will indicate the civilizations level of technological sophistication. The movie kinda trains people what to look for, for instance, one of the alien's space is about 95% natural! All the species are just getting started, they haven't developed their best technology yet either. I say yes to #1 and no to #2! I understand shrinking and moving stars, moving things is what we do, and everything is fundamentally physics, so it's all about moving things, but I'm thinking that to search for a dyson swarm, you empty the bagless vaccum cleaner, but you would look for the absence of the light which would be absorbed by the photovoltaics. So, look for clusters of dyson swarms when looking at Andromeda, but I'm personally going to focus on the habitable zone of the galaxy and for stars which resemble our own. Should narrow down the number of stars that I have to monitor, everyone else can choose the ones they want to monitor. For me, I'm not really trying to put too much into the extraterrestrials right now. We spend a lot of money on them and they don't exist. I know I'm being facetious, but, I know, at least, that there are a lot of stars, and I know that intelligence gave rise with our sized sun, and in the galactic habitable zone. That's relevant for us right now, even if you don't find intelligence, you may find some interesting destinations. If they are ultra silent, it is because they have to be, the foe is probably loud and clumbsy! I have to be completely honest, making money advances technology better than any other force, and their civilzation would have to work the same way. So, making money off aliens is the thing to do, not spending large sums of money looking for something you spend a lifetime and never find. Only 1% of the space budget, and that leaves 9% for space force weapons which are better than radio telescopes. They are both good, you want both, but a space frigate is better security than a telescope. I want the people who are specialist in this SETI field to make multiple contributions. The coolest would be, and I'll do it with Kardashev.com, and Kardashev can be on the board of directors. He doesn't own the name, but I'd like to have him on the board of directors, and on Funky Friday, some of our dorky employees search for intelligent extraterrestrial life, and it's a way to retain employees. A business like ours needs to do our do diligence before we send a probe into a distant star system. Most the people who will look for intelligent extraterrestrial life are going to be the same as good ole' boys who dig wells. For instance, when we send the probes to Proxima Centauri, we have to first do our do diligence and search the system for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. Could start a war otherwise! Also, you're supposed to look for life for a prolonged period of time. It's not a quick scan sort of thing. I'm thinking you need to examine information for longer than a decade unless you get an obvious radio signal. For instance, has the light for this star started to dim over the past 100 years. I seriously see it as a company like Apple own the infrastructure. Students, professors, teachers, and people get a chance to direct the telescope for their own purposes, and they are all looking for signals, but a company which can accept a contract to inspect is useful as a service. Every business won't need the infrastructure, but if you're a business which is going to launch probes at Proxima Centauri, you could just pay to have Apple do a spectral analysis rather than everyone investing in their own infrastructure. We can start doing it this way now! A company like Kardashev.com will pay to use Apple's infrastructure, or if we're rich, people can pay to use our infrastructure, but a few companies can have a SETI installment. The business side of things does compel people to know what's out there.

[@Arvandor81]

Technically, a Dyson Swarm wouldn't be capturing all of a star's energy - some of it would leak through the gaps. So a Dyson Swarm civilization would be Kardashev 1.8 or 1.9., not Kardashev 2.

[@Frazec_Atsjenkov]

Would it be possible and pragmatic to transport solar ammounts of energy over interstellar distances, like some sort of interstellar dyson-powered power grid?

[@Vivian2290]

Maybe civilizations that build one dyson sphere dont build another because it would be dificult to keep an interstelar empire, the distance betwen stars is too big. Civilizations are likely rare to begin with, so if a dyson sphere exists, it likely is in another galaxy and we cant spot it.

[@michaelstriker8698]

What about massive photon-doubling (heat into dust-absorbing light) or photon-halving (heat into AM radio, or is that quartering?)? We know ways to convert light into more energy intense light. In each case, the goal wouldn't be direct masking, but taking advantage of the properties of the environment to provide the masking. Thus the evidence would then be warm dusty areas or warm spots in voids. Yes, these radiate heat, but that's "generate low frequency waste from upshifting most of the energy". If you start with heat frequencies that easily penetrate dust, will your waste necessarily be the same frequency that you are collecting to upshift or downshift? (Apparently photon doubling is second-harmonic generation, and used for green lasers. And photon halving is "half-harmonic generation", and has been proven for "infra-red combs".)

[@FrostPDP]

Am I the only one who noticed the music cut off qhen Issac was talking about "life anywhere?" I'd find a timestamp but youtube/my phone are weird about that.

[@FrostPDP]

About 31min in

[@Strykenine]

LoTR is human mythology. Fight me.

[@algorithmgeneratedanimegir1286]

It's English mythology, cope.

[@Strykenine]

@@algorithmgeneratedanimegir1286 There is no 'English' mythology. Touch grass.

[@j-twd930]

@@algorithmgeneratedanimegir1286 so does that mean that the English are not humans?

[@mattparker9726]

19:39 Yes. that's exactly what the Boötes Void is.

[@bryanrisso7508]

If im not mistaken wouldnt a dyson sphere be a mega of mega super structures. Wouldnt a dyson sphere require the mass of an entire planet. And not a small one either.

[@Geroskop]

I like how sound reasoning and loginc is trampled by - "electric engine is lame, gasoline engine go wruumm-wrummm and thats why it better!")))

[@armchairgravy8224]

How does a civilization handle the orbital destabilizations caused by creating a Dyson sphere?

[@Alexander_Kale]

Moving satelites takes energy. If its one thing a dyson sphere gives you in abundance, its energy...

[@generalnawaki]

Query, could one use star lifting on a massive scale to ward of heat death? keep the stars alive into eternity.

[@hazel7296]

No, when you remove the heavier elements from the sun it's mass shrinks. You would have to constantly feed lighter elements in to maintain the reaction and you would run out eventually.

[@generalnawaki]

@@hazel7296 of hydrogen? I mean yeah sure eventually but that eventually would be a LONG way away.

[@j-twd930]

@@hazel7296 It actually does extend a stars life. Notice how red dwarfs, with less mass than Sol, will outlive it

[@CAVEDATA]

Thats like ants looking for giant ant hills to confirm greater intelligence, not seeing them and deciding that means there is no further intelligence apart from ants.

[@cheapmovies25]

That would be amazing to see something crazy like that

[@ncc2110]

Good morning, Isaac!

[@Yezpahr]

25:17 'How' is hawking radiation converted into electricity? Is it just a photon?

[@skynet5828]

Hawking radiation conforms to the black-body radiation of a black hole, so as a thermal radiation it should indeed be mostly made of photons.

[@matthewmckever2312]

Wouldn't Carrington events put Dyson constructions out of order, completely destroying any electrical component. It would have to be a purely mechanical, we would be mining away entire planets.

[@RevantheBlack]

Can’t wait until we have to name a star Eru Illuvatar

[@boots4yew]

I still think that we are looking for the wrong criteria of Dyson swarms having infrared signatures akin to simply being larger "spheres" heated to an equilibrium temperature with the host star. Given that the "waste" heat can be channeled into even lower heat dumps, such as a black hole for example (or even just the universal background), using nano-channels taking advantage of quantum tunneling, they could be constructed to have a waste heat profile temperature as low as the CMB (or lower). Not taking advantage of the immense amount of "extra" power by not doing this seems inefficient, especially since it should be easily achievable by any civilization advanced enough to build a full-on Dyson swarm in the first place.

[@skynet5828]

Still leaves the gravitational influence of these constructs as a means of finding them.

[@jessewahwah]

The amount of time and raw materials required to make a Dyson Sphere basically rules out any realistic possibilities of them existing. The concept is nothing more than human sci-fi.

[@cosmictreason2242]

Nonsense. You can build a satellite and put it in orbit around sun. Now build a trillion. Takes less than 10,000 years. Once you get starlifting it'll go super fast

[@TGBurgerGaming]

So....what are the fewer things bigger than a dyson sphere? Edit: 4 You can build better fusion reactors than a star yourself.

[@virutech32]

Birche Planets & ringworlds under known physics come to mind

[@airborneranger-ret]

Overall nicely done :)

[@StressBurger]

"i'm scott malkinson, i have diabetes"

[@ddnguyen278]

what if any civilization which overcomes gravity also overcomes causality, so any observations we make about ancient light, might not actually fit the original reality but then we're in the realm of magic.

[@entity_unknown_]

"there is no intelligence. None" it sounded personal

[@grayaj23]

I''m inclined to believe that the lack of evidence of dyson swarms is more likely to be evidence that they're impractical or unattainable for some reason we're not aware of.

[@entity_unknown_]

We have the database to find one now possibly

[@Cmdtheartist]

Scifi really ruined reality. Or, did Isaac's reality ruin scifi? It's a real pickle.

[@pineapplepenumbra]

If you enclosed your star in a tungsten sphere, how would you monitor what it was up to in there?

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

Probably by having the occasional hole on the surface wide enough to point a sensor at. But it probably wouldn't be necessary. Just like the opaque photophere of our own sun, which has basically zilch to do with the layers below, you can determine a lot from how it changes as a result of behavior below. Plus no civilizaiton is building something like this till they've been look at their galaxy and other, and the trillions of stars they can clearly see in them, for a long time, so they know a lot about their mechanics.

[@pineapplepenumbra]

@@isaacarthurSFIA So there might still be clues on the surface of the tungsten? I of course agree that anyone with the skill to manufacture such a sphere would have had plenty of time to gain a very good understanding of how stars work.

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

@@pineapplepenumbra Yes, they'd be a lot more subtle than the way sunspots talk to us, depending on thickness you might still see those sunspots or it might be like trying to watch TV through a sheet of wax paper, but again you could still run probes and telescopes into it.

[@pineapplepenumbra]

@@isaacarthurSFIA "or it might be like trying to watch TV through a sheet of wax paper, " Ah, we've all done, that. Sorry, in all seriousness, that's a good analogy. Btw, I didn't expect to get an answer so soon, let alone from you 🙂

[@skynet5828]

​@@isaacarthurSFIAPerhaps an inner dyson swarm with tungsten satellites orbiting the star instead of a solid sphere might be an easier way of managing the stars spectrum while also allowing direct observation of its surface?