Star Trek Next Generation - A Dyson Sphere

[@RandomAmerican3000]

Not surprising they would be sucked in. Dyson was also known for his vacuums.

[@ML98837bob]

Good one!

[@markhine3232]

Haha!! Good one!!!

[@NJB74656]

No joke! The Dyson V7 Animal is a badass when it comes to cleaning!

[@greendelano]

🤣👍

[@dsraverstar]

That's the other Dyson! 😂

[@gibbosgarage2613]

The greatest discovery in all existence and it’s never mentioned again

[@Sr89hot]

Technology was advanced, best the Federation kept it hidden. Wouldn’t want Borg to assimilate it, or have Klingons using it to breed more of those repulsive Targs.

[@tshelby123]

Right that thing was more advanced than anything for starfleet ever created I wish there would explore more of this episode but then again they did in Star Trek Enterprise they will call the sphere builders had hundreds of them even never watched Star Trek Enterprise watch last season

[@IRMentat]

The trek mmo uses it a fair bit. Still, trek in general trends towards galactic travel but faction numbers barely in the millions despite multi solar systems under each of those factions influence. Scientifically speaking. Limitless energy but pre K1 on the civilisations level.

[@doct0rnic]

Yes, and in this episode was only really about making Scotty feel useful, personally I think they just could have made a two part episode about the sphere and left Scotty out completely.

[@knightshousegames]

What's the enterprise gonna do? Discover it again? The mission of the Enterprise is exploration. They find stuff, then move on, it's the archeologists job to study relics like this. It might have been nice if they had tied it to the Iconians or some other race from that era

[@juzoli]

I don’t like how this universe-shattering discovery, which dwarfs Borg, and everything else, was just forgotten by the next episode.

[@duross101]

This also annoyed me

[@earlwallace2015]

Iconians. How they eventually tell the story.

[@starflame34]

@@earlwallace2015 To be more accurate, it's how Star Trek Online told the story. I haven't watched "Discovery" or "Picard" so I couldn't say if they also brought it up.

[@doct0rnic]

@@starflame34 no, they just went back to Q in Picard, I never finished it, Q is just lazy writing, I felt Picard could have had so much potential than some supernatural superman with unlimited powers controlling everything

[@juzoli]

@@animesavedmylife3648 That Dyson sphere has the tech to easily beat Borg.

[@stevendavis1243]

I always thought they never did this episode justice to the truly immense size a Dyson sphere would take. A 1000 meter Vessel that close to such a structure would not even be aware of the the curvature of said Dyson. It would appear flat from the ships perspective.

[@avon_c6199]

That's almost like how in some scenes of TNG or other Trek series, when they say "ship approaching X00.000km off starboard" and in CGI the very next second it's like right next to them. xD

[@apmdavies]

Based on the size of the sphere the walls would probably have to be at least 1000 kilometers thick to maintain integrity.

[@DayneTreader]

@@avon_c6199 Magnification is a thing.

[@DayneTreader]

The ship is thousands of kilometers away from it.

[@HighmageDerin]

@@apmdavies And you have to dismantle your entire Solar System every single planet asteroid and gaseous body in it in order to make one. And you might even have to go after extrasolar objects to finish it up

[@madtrucker3757]

“Relics” is my favorite episode. Was great seeing James Doohan again. R.I.P. sir. U r where u belong, among the stars.

[@fesswah]

I loved how the whole incident with the older starship gave Scotty back his self worth. Such a wonderful episode to watch!

[@josephyoung6749]

one of my favorites!

[@Borgforce]

Mine too - for me it was like the first time I played Halo on the original Xbox, I took a lot of time staring up at the other side of the halo ring and wondering what the land masses looked like - I used to pause this episode to see what the interior looked like too, it was utterly fascinating to look at…

[@Zurround]

I am curious. If I decide to be anal retentive and point out that its technically TWO episodes and insist that you pick your single favorite episode of Next Gen would it be part 1 or part 2? Personally I pick part 2 because that was when they went inside the sphere and we could briefly see gigantic environments like gigantic forests and oceans etc.

[@mikeprovost]

If any TNG episode/concept needed a follow-up, it was this one. That sphere is the most advanced engineering feat ever encountered on this show. Where's the race that built it? What tech did they leave behind? So much potential.

[@Randomnessisreasuring]

Heck tell the nanite civilization Wesley created about it. It would be the perfect homeworld for them.

[@micah3331]

People in the 80s really didn't care that much about lore or story in tv shows so yeah wasted potential

[@Tayvin4042]

​@@micah3331 Also serialized storytelling was much harder to tell back then, episodic stuff was far easier

[@PMMcIntyre]

Play Star Trek Online.

[@JM_Solo]

Scientists - real life scientists in this year of 2024 - think they may have found evidence of 7 planets with potential Dyson spheres. Welcome to the future.

[@baconsnot]

Data says: Surface area of 250 million M Class planets, Federation has perhaps 1000 planets. * Nearly the same amount of habitable planets in the entire galaxy (estimated 300 million) * 250 million Earths = 1.28 x 10^17 km2 surface area * 1.28 x 10^17 km2 = a spherical radius of just over 100 million km (about the orbit of Venus) * Thickness of shell looks to be about 3 km wide at entrance (for comparison, halo ring is 22.3 km thick) * Volume of shell at 3 km thick = 3.83 x 10^17 km3 * Volume of metallic structural material assuming 25% solid = 9.56 x 10^16 km3 * Only mining planets and assuming 3% concentration of metallic elements = 9000 solar systems worth of minerals to build * The sun is 0.1% metallic by mass and assuming same by volume = 68 suns worth of minerals to build * Borg Cube is 3x3x3 km or volume of 27 km3 = 3.54 x 10^15 Borg Cubes (assuming same density) * Borg Cubes stacked end to end = 1.06 x 10^16 km long * 1.06 x 10^16 km = enough Borg Cubes to reach Alpha Centauri and Back 130 times. I would imagine that there would be a suspicious amount of missing planets in the area that were used to build this monstrosity.

[@jaysdood]

​@@Bushcraft-xz6xdThey ordered the materials off Temu. Got a hella discount for volume.

[@Monkey-fv2km]

Which is one of the many reasons rigid Dyson spheres are extremely unlikely.

[@timskrobot4025]

Imagine if this Dyson Sphere came from another galaxy, a galaxy that used up all it's planets up just to construct it, then used its immense gravity to move the star that was inside it.

[@-ShootTheGlass-]

Nano-technology…. or , whatever.

[@unematrix]

These things don't actually require that much mass. For example, Mercury alone would be enough to build a dyson sphere to collect all the sunlight (but not enough for living space). Just a few star systems contains more mass than a dyson sphere would, simply becaues a planet is solid and a dyson sphere is just a shell.

[@reidboggs4344]

I always loved this scene because when it first aired, we had just learned about it in my middle school science class (nerd teachers rule) and I got to explain it to my dad. Awesome memory.

[@jasonluong3862]

With such a monumental discovery, one that can be used as the basis for an entire Star Trek series, we never hear about it ever since.

[@1abcrr1]

Read some paperback st novels , sorry can't remember when I read the Dyson sphere novels

[@williampyle8635]

THEY are just waiting for YOU to fund it.

[@davidtexas1638]

the star inside went nova and the sphere was destroyed

[@JustJay1281]

considering an advanced civilization that built it, and abandoned it... good chances are Star Fleet was smart enough to avoid it, outside of possibly science ship using probes and scanners to learn what they can.

[@aeroripper]

I just think it's funny how Riker always needs everything explained to him as a vehicle for the audience.

[@maddslothii2532]

"We are being pulled in side" -Worf and to think Data is the one that pretends to be Sherlock Holmes

[@zumogerstubchen2340]

The sphere had a diameter of 200 mio. km, so the surface area would be 125.663.706.143.591.729,54 km². Data says, it equals the surface area of 250 mio. class M planets, so a class M planet has 502.654.824,57 km² of surface area or a diameter of 12.649,11 km. Earth has 12 756,27 km, so yes, data's math is correct as always.

[@THEMathHacker-121]

Fair play 🫡

[@kaidenshepard8446]

I just love how the doors into/out of the sphere are just sort of big enough for a Galaxy class starship to easily fit through as well lol. It is a great episode indeed na dprobably back in the day and probably with reruns today makes people aware of the theory of a Dyson Sphere, and not just the company of Dyson or James Dyson

[@DayneTreader]

Did you mean Freeman Dyson, or James Doohan?

[@delvinciposterkid]

Theoretically a Dyson sphere having the diameter close to the Earth's orbit around the Sun would support an atmosphere around its outer surface and upon approach the curvature would diminish to an extent that the Enterprise would be flying on its side relative to a flat plane. Much like a Halo Station. Still one if not the best episode in TNG.

[@boedillard4541]

I thought the same thing - that and the sphere wouldn't have appeared round at that size as the ship orbitted the sphere.

[@Teclis98]

Or Miles Dyson.

[@ReviewUSA-ri5dv]

The scale is always wrong with these things. The enterprise would be orders of magnitude smaller than a speck of dust next to a Dyson sphere, and that "front door" wouldn't be much of a front door because it would also be microscopically small relative to the actual size of the sphere.

[@Michael-cf9cj]

There would likely be any number of 'front doors' and their size would depend entirely on the expected size of what's coming inside. For example, the doors of a very large building today are still designed for people, or perhaps a vehicle if transporting in and out is necessary.

[@darrennew8211]

@@Michael-cf9cj The difference is that it doesn't take tens or thousands of hours to get from one door to another in a building. The "front door" should certainly be at least planet sized.

[@kyrridas1573]

@@darrennew8211 yep. the ship should've been pictured as being smaller, but the 'front door' is probably accurate. besides, beings capable of producing a dyson sphere would probably have material transport ships the size of planets/moons

[@DavidAWA]

Yeah. I also think there's no way you could get a view where you could see the Enterprise that would make the perspective make it look anything but flat.

[@JustWasted3HoursHere]

Plus, it would literally take them YEARS just to even FIND that door! Overall one of my favorite episodes though.

[@AaronStitt]

“It’s a very old theory number 2 I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it” Shots fired on deck

[@johnnyrico707]

I thought he said I'm NOT surprised

[@aykandogan9049]

@@johnnyrico707cause he said I’m not surprised. It wouldn’t make sense otherwise

[@xStarblazer]

I feel like a Dyson Sphere would be kind of a topic in the Academy, no? I guess if they had never encountered it it may have been lost to time as a theory, even in the present we don't learn about every 300 year old topic, especially if it appears redundant to us now. But idk, I feel like most officers would be aware of it, but then again it is Riker.

[@Svensk7119]

I am NOT surprised.... Was what he said.

[@Fabian-Wenzel]

It's always amazing that I understand Patrick Stuart perfectly as a German. His English is clear and concise and when I listen to Americans, I hardly understand a word.

[@GenJouh]

Cause he's British and did traditional old theatre school.

[@stargazer7644]

That would be because you're used to hearing British accents, but not American ones.

[@Cipher00007]

Lol who the hell told you that?! He’s English!!

[@Fabian-Wenzel]

@darkwood777 How does that work? I went to public school. In Germany, education is a matter for the federal states, in other words, the education ministers of the federal states are responsible for the curricula and I have no influence on that. There is a consensus among education politicians in Germany that Queens English/BBC English is the best English. I agree that this English is the highest level of the English language. Unfortunately, this variant of the English language is not suitable for everyday use, because only the English upper class cultivates Queen's English. The best German is spoken in Hanover and the surrounding area. The words are pronounced correctly without any dialectical influences.

[@grandfathergeek]

One of my favorite episodes.

[@Zurround]

There is a Star Trek Next Gen. NOVEL called DYSON SPHERE where they go back and actually EXPLORE it. Its almost incomprehensible that something that big could be inhabitable.

[@christopherdean1326]

That's a strange comment to make. The whole point of a Dyson sphere, the very reason for its existence, is for it to be inhabitable inside. The internal surface would be several orders of magnitude larger than every single scrap of land on Earth, something like three million, trillion square miles....

[@Zurround]

@@christopherdean1326 What do you mean by "strange comment"? It IS almost incomprehensible.

[@christopherdean1326]

@@Zurround It's "incomprehensible" that something that size could be inhabitable? Are you sure you don't mean "UNinhabitable"?...

[@unematrix]

@@christopherdean1326 that's incorrect. The goal of the dyson sphere was to collect ALL the sunlight from a star. And it wasn't even a rigid sphere, but a swarm of solar collectors. And living on the inside of one is impossible becuase you'd just fall into the sun. living on top of one means you have no sunlight (a second star would disrupt the orbit too much).

[@Rohan2300]

​@@unematrix That's the Dyson Sphere/Swarm mode, the Dyson Shell is the popular image, a solid globe around a star. You could in principle spin it for gravity like a ringworld, but that'll mean that only the equatorial regions are actually habitable. Given it's Star-Trek, I assume it just has artificial gravity throughout. Why not? It doesn't seem to be a very complex technology given it's absolutely everywhere...

[@Artifactsofmars]

I would have liked it if they would have done more science with this one, but I was glad to see this sphere and Scotty at least. Having Scotty in it made it more fun.

[@BradiKal61]

Sci Fi can introduce real science concepts, but then get a lot qeong about them. Take Interstellar and black hole and time dialation for example

[@russell5078084]

Imagine what the federation scientists could learn from studying that thing.

[@nzer19]

They’d have the equivalent of 250 million planets to explore.

[@hiuto2]

If it followed typical movie or tv show brilliance, an ensign would have pushed a big red button, forbidden planet style, and the entire thing would have exploded.

[@cameronhenry541]

It's in star trek online you find out it was built by the iconians as a gateway to a sister Dyson sphere in the delta quadrant

[@benjamintoast3082]

@@cameronhenry541 so the one shown in this episode is an Iconian dyson sphere?

[@DavidKnowles0]

@@benjamintoast3082 In STO every mystery in STNG was the ICONIANS.

[@siatelecomsltdLondon]

Captain Picard: "Open a channel to that communications array!" Dyson sphere:"In your dreams"

[@imofage3947]

The shenanigans that this episode enables are a little mind blowing. Because of these transport hijinx, there's theoretically a window where 4 of THE most EPIC legends of the Starfleet Engineering Corps, Scotty, Laforge, O'Brien, and Torres, could collaborate on a project. Actually, Considering that O'Brien retired from active service to teach at the academy, it's theoretically possible that he could have taught Scotty some of the refresher courses mentioned in the novels. Just try to Imagine what that quartet of engineering wizards could accomplish under threat of impending doom. Incidentally, RIP Jimmy Doohan, may your continuing journey show you wonderous sights.

[@CatsClaw44]

Did you actually try to put Torres in that group? Really?

[@imofage3947]

@@CatsClaw44 You trying to argue that she's not the Chief Engineer on a hero ship? Let's see, she helped built the first Warp 10 engine, modded Voyager's warp core to use 3 new flavors of FTL (Borg transwarp, Quantum Slipstream, and whatever the SilverBlood Voyager used), tamed several Borg enhancements (without Seven's help), helped integrate Future Janeway's 25th century tech, helped design the Delta Flyer 1 and 2, improvised a phaser into a forcefield generator, and improvised a way to perform drydock maintenance in the field with what they had aboard.

[@CatsClaw44]

@@imofage3947 Yes I am, she's not in the same stratosphere as them considering the fact that they did it for YEARS while she magically was able to do miraculous things on engineering after a few weeks on the job.

[@imofage3947]

@@CatsClaw44 Wow, a little rusty on our Trek Lore are we? Laforge started out as a helmsman wearing a red command uniform in TNG S1. His Engineering credentials were invented post-hoc to explain his promotion to Chief Engineer in S2. O'Brien also started out in a red uniform but served as Transporter Chief on the Enterprise for 4 years before transferring to DS9. Prior to that, he was the Junior tactical officer aboard the Rutledge under Captain Maxwell. So it's dubious to say that either one did general engineering work for years before taking on their respective legendary roles. I'm not so familiar with Scotty's service record prior to the Enterprise, but the JJ verse mentions he was into transporter theory. Torres is no more a Mary Sue than her male counterparts. She had formal engineering training at Starfleet Academy (where she was considered a "brilliant student and promising engineer") and field experience as Chief Engineer on Chakotay's Maquis ship for a year, which is arguably a much harder job, keeping a ship packed with improvised repairs working with an inconsistent supply of proper parts. Her proven ability was the primary reason Chakotay pushed so hard for her to be considered for the job. And Seven complimented her skills ("she posses extensive knowledge of the ship's systems") when giving One a tour of the ship ("Drone"). But even if none of that were true, simply being a member of Voyager's Warp 10 project team, never mind the fact that she was presumably team lead, would be more than enough to earn her a place in the history books along side Zefram Cochrane and Henry Archer. Side-effects aside, the shuttle still reached Warp 10. The main reason Starfleet never continued the project would have been lack of access to the special materials Voyager sourced from the Delta Quadrant.

[@stevenstandley1241]

When you have had enough of your galaxy and decide to make a mobile home with your sun and go glamping around the universe.

[@magicmulder]

Dyson spheres are notoriously hard to move. You could probably argue they are impossible to move since you’d need billions of engines on one side and the structure would have to be crazy stable.

[@antaresmaelstrom5365]

0:55 "why didn't we detect it." "Our sensors (at least some which detect mass) were thrown off by the things huge mass."

[@captmurdock]

Word. "Readings are off the scale, Captain." "That's it; we need bigger scales."

[@MrDeadsr]

Amazing how in all that time nobody bothered looking for the ship in the sector it dissapeared in

[@jesusnthedaisychain]

A sector is around 800 cubic light years in volume and it was a 3-passenger ship carrying nothing and nobody of real importance 70 years prior. Why would anyone look across 800 cubic light years of space? How much time and resources could be spent on the search?

[@MrDeadsr]

@@jesusnthedaisychain did you call Scotty a nobody? And there is a difference between doing a poor job at looking and not looking at all. The least they could have done was a poor job at finding them and sending a ship and have them do a long range scan. It's shown to be a region that was never explored. So why not send an exploration or research ship doing some basic work.

[@jesusnthedaisychain]

@@MrDeadsr Yeah, he's a nobody. In the grand galactic sense, he's a nobody. He had no importance anymore to the Federation, because he was retired. He was done and he was heading off to a retirement planet to live out his remaining years. Not exactly a high-priority missing persons case. Don't clutch your pearls so much.

[@MrDeadsr]

@@jesusnthedaisychain former captain is not someone I'd consider a complete nobody. It would at least warrant a small checkup. But saying the fleet needs to go there but at least have a ship make a small detour and do a long range scan, in part cause it's a region that hasn't been chartered yet

[@dtvjho]

They might have, running at warp covering the distances while sensors failed to pick up the sphere. The gravity well would have been noticed but the search ship would need to get within a few tens of AU to feel it. Basically it had to stumble upon the thing, as the Enterprise did.

[@falconwind00]

Imagine many primitive civilizations evolving from the native fauna left behind. They would develop telescopes and be able to see other civilizations and species on distant parts of the sphere, and later even communicate via radio long before they developed the tech to actually travel the distance to meet them.

[@Michael-cf9cj]

I had an idea one time of creating a fantasy RPG on the inside of a Dyson Sphere, but when I did the math and figured out the inner surface area ... it was too much.

[@falconwind00]

@@Michael-cf9cj magic is the obvious solution, but if it’s a low fantasy setting, I get the sphere builders would have made a network of teleportation gates to allow travel around.

[@Michael-cf9cj]

@@falconwind00 Oh yeah, the distances could be dealt with, but the vast overwhelming size was daunting.

[@falconwind00]

@@Michael-cf9cj for sure. At that point, things start to loose meaning and get pretty strange too. Like, If there was only a single genesis on the surface, how many millions of years might it take for life to propagate across its surface. I imagine there might be spots of entirely unique unrelated ecosystems separated by vast empty earth, devoid of all life. A strange landscape where there is perhaps water, lakes, mountains and rivers but totally lacking plants or animals.

[@girlgarde]

That would makes for one heck of a fantasy setting mixed in with sci-fi. Someone should write a fantasy/sci-fi series involving this idea!

[@garyweston3269]

I found a lost Professor Dyson in Cambridge Massachusetts. I was on the way to his lecture. I walked up to him, introduced myself, and offered my assistance. I walked Mr Dyson to his lecture. We had about fifteen minutes to have a fantastic conversation. One on one. He gave me a spot right up front at his lecture. A kind man. He died just a couple years later...

[@sistakia33]

I wish they could have focused just on this phenomenon for one full episode and then focused on Mr. Scott for the second part. I think one of the things that made Star Trek great were the teaching opportunities.

[@timmitchell3870]

If I remember right this was the episode that brought back James Doohan as Scotty. Not just a good episode because it had Scotty - but a pretty good episode in and of itself. And yes I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be enough scrap iron in the universe to create such a structure, and I'm also pretty sure anything/anyone on the inside would be cooked to a crisp - but a Dyson Sphere is still a pretty cool concept.

[@TheMajesticSeaPancake]

There would be enough material within a single solar system, just got to get more creative than using steel. However without proper venting which would be very hard to do yes they probably would bake on the inside keeping it closed like that.

[@Hedning1390]

@@TheMajesticSeaPancake Why would venting be a problem? The surface area on the inside is pretty much the same as on the outside. I don't think the concept includes an atmosphere that reaches all the way to the sun. Obviously that wouldn't work as the gas would simply fall into the sun and become part of it. The problem of a Dyson sphere is having a material that can hold itself together as a rigid structure like that can't orbit.

[@jimsteele9261]

@@Hedning1390 There are a couple other problems... without Trek style artificial gravity, there would be no gravity inside the sphere. except from the central star. (I used to be able to do the math for that, but that was a long time ago.) So anything inside would fall into the sun. If they tried to spin it, the gravity would be max at the equator, and zero at the poles. So you'd still lose the interior atmosphere into the sun, via the polar regions. I remember reading once that someone did the calculations for Niven''s Ringworld. The material strength needed was on the same order as the strong nuclear force.. that holds atomic nuclei together.

[@thundercricket4634]

The heating inside the sphere wouldn't be such a problem. Any civilization capable of producing a material strong enough to maintain a rigid shape at that scale would have surrounded the star with a smaller, second shell of material that had varying levels of translucency designed to simulate night\day cycles. It would likely have also doubled as a solar collector, generating absolutely colossal amounts of energy. The biggest problems with a structure this size (aside from the previously mentioned material stresses on something that big), would be the fact that there'd be little or no gravity pulling people\objects to the spheres surface, but instead toward the sun. In addition, because the sphere completely encapsulates the star, it'd have no net gravitational effect on it. This would make it very easy for the sphere and star to loose their orientations to one another and collide, likely with apocalyptic results. This is actually the reason that Larry Niven wrote Ringworld (Excellent book, definitely recommend). His version was the equatorial slice of a Dyson Sphere and he had it spinning fast enough that centrifugal force simulated gravity.

[@jfbeam]

Who says people would live on the interior surface? They could live in the structure itself. As you can see at the Enterprise is pulled in, it's a pretty thick structure.

[@preppertrucker5736]

The Dyson sphere is literally the greatest object the federation has ever discovered…..

[@ivandoneshefsky4762]

Freeman Dyson conquered the vacuum cleaner in the 20th century, got bored and created his own sphere naming it after himself. Genius!

[@robot_spider]

My 8 year old nephew talked to me about Dyson spheres for an hour. But a first officer in the Federation 400 years in the future has never heard of one? Most unbelievable storyline in all of Star Trek.

[@unematrix]

Picard even got it wrong :D

[@aykandogan9049]

It’s possible people just forgot about it because they found the limitations or better ways to do energy without building the biggest mega structure ever. It’s like us not knowing 16st century alchemist theories. We know they don’t work now why bother. Or just the fact that they found something like fusion energy and decided that a building like this wasn’t worth doing so it got forgotten

[@robot_spider]

@@aykandogan9049 Yeah, that's actually a great point. I was coming from the perspective of "in a universe where it IS possible, they would probably know", but if we remove that assumption, it's totally possible. Good call.

[@jamescourt8497]

They could have made a whole show about this

[@JustWasted3HoursHere]

Man, I loved this episode when it first aired. When Geordi beamed Scotty from the transporter buffer and it made that classic TOS sound effect, a grin appeared from one side of my skull to the other. I sometimes wonder how Scotty's retirement went on Norpin V...

[@CavemanCBB]

There has been at least one book on that . I once read it.

[@patchin1]

I had the honor of attending a speech given by Dr. Dyson when he visited Purdue University back around 1995. I learned his name from Feynman's autobiography. I think the seminar was about extraterrestrial life etc. but can't recall any specific discussion on Dyson sphere.

[@KennyHazy97]

IIRC he first postulated the creation of Dyson spheres/swarms as part of a paper on discovering extraterrestrial life. I believe the argument went that while there is little we could concretely suppose about other life just by judging from out own example of life on Earth, Dyson was confident that an intelligent, technological civilisation like ours would want ever greater supplies of energy. As the star is far and away the greatest source of energy in a planetary system, the need for more energy will drive a technological civilisation to start building light collectors around their sun, with a swarm collecting all light being the logical endpoint. Thus, we should be able to detect such civilisations in the process of building their swarm, as their star gradually dims and is blocked by the construction. Although, Dyson himself said the concept should instead probably be called the Stapledon Sphere, as he was inspired by reading the concept in Olaf Stapledon's sci-fi story 'Star Maker'.

[@badger6882]

It’s a very common term

[@badger6882]

This episode somehow captured the awkward, winding nature of TOS and also showed some charming friendships in the same was TOS would

[@Devanow]

1:47 - Data was a bit off though. If Earth is given the default size for "M-Class" planets, it would be more than double. The surface of a sphere equals Pi*4*(radius^2), therefore the earth does have about 510'064'471 km² (510 million). If taken the sun-to-earth distance (radius of earth-orbit), we're at 282'743'338'823'081'291 km² (282 quaddrillion). Divided by one another, we're at 554'328'628 times the surface-area of earth.

[@neilwilliams4684]

He did say "more than" though so he was right ;-) . Maybe he didn't want to blow Rikers mind too much?

[@abehambino]

I’m no mathematician, but does that account for the thickness of the hull? Maybe he was making some assumptions on the thickness and the thicker it is, the smaller surface area on the interior, no? But I’m sure it’s just probably a goof!

[@theherrdark4834]

The only thing that really bugged me about this episode is where is the light coming from to reflect off the surface like that?

[@stargazer7644]

The light is coming from the gaffer's spot lights, of course.

[@MesaperProductions]

ME TOO!

[@gregorysorce1898]

A sphere built around Uranus would benefit everyone around it.

[@Daehawk]

They knew the sector the ship disappeared in and yet in 70 years they never found the giant Dyson Sphere or its gravity well. Lol.

[@ge2719]

even compared to the scale of planetary orbits around suns, the gaps between solar systems are so much more massive. multiple times the order of magnitude. S trying to find this in a region of space would be like using an electron microscope to find a single atom in a vacuum the size of a star.

[@ScienceChap]

There is no radiant energy coming off it. The thing would be completely dark from the outside. The structure would need to be pretty substantial and if they're harvesting all the star's energy, then there would be nothing to see. In interstellar terms, this thing would be a speck of dust and completely invisible. There are supermassive red giants bigger than 200 million km diameter so no. This would not be obvious.

[@Nethan2000]

​@ge2719 1. The star inside it would heat it up to room temperature, which means it would be glowing in infrared. We can already detect brown dwarfs in interstellar space thanks to their emissions. 2. Any starship passing nearby would see it obstruct the view of the stars behind it. This is how we often detect asteroids.

[@ge2719]

​@@Nethan2000 brown dwarfs stars are minimum 1000 kelvin, room temp is about 290 kelvin. very different in terms of the amount of radiation that would be put out. We can barely detect brown dwarf stars, and have trouble. if youre passing nearby then you dont have to rely on it blocking the view of stars behind it, you would just see it. in order to notice it blocking the view of stars behind it you would have to be aiming sensors right at it, which you wouldnt be doing if you didnt know it was there. We detect asteroids USING suns behind them to detect changes in the radiation emitted. We have to knwo the sun is there before hand and aim our telescopes right at the star. we even have to have them track and match its movement through space. In star trek they still have to scan regions of space bit at a time like we do now . they just have better technology and so can do it faster and more thoroughly. But still the problem remains that space is far too big. the size of the gaps between stars will always be orders of magnitude higher and so no matter how good your sensors are you have to spend time looking in order to map space.

[@gustavolopez3405]

2:00 si existiera, no verias la curvatura.... el tamaño seria tan grande, como ocupa la circunferencia de un sistema solar, no verias la curvatura si estas a esa distancia.

[@hellobeautiful5225]

Picard seemed unbothered when it started sucking them in. It’s as if he was thinking “Well, I wanted to go inside anyways. “

[@douglaslarson7081]

This clip is from S06 E04 titled "Relics".

[@josephmassaro]

Someone sent Dyson a copy of this episode. He thought it was amusing, if a little silly.

[@scottmcshannon6821]

it was very silly, they totally failed to understand the science.

[@youtubewatcher759]

More amazing than the sphere itself is the fact of square miles the inside would be if the star was stable. I barely get around this planet, so to think a sphere with this many miles to travel would be a lifetime and mind-boggling. "What, Vegas is on the other side? See you in few years."

[@knightshousegames]

Data says the surface area would be equivilant of nearly 250 million earths, so it would be unimaginably massive Given the level of tech you would need to be at to build such a thing though, they;d probably have tech for getting around it as well. If they can use transporters to teleport people from a ship to the surface of a planet near instantly, it seems only reasonable to be able to teleport from one part of the sphere to another isn't hard to imagine give that it is all connected and all has the same power source.

[@unematrix]

I did a short calculation and at light speed it would take you 26 seconds to take a train from one side at the speed of light (assuming you're traving on the dyson sphere and not directly) It's about 960 million KM in circumference). A high speed train traveling 500 km per hour would take 1.92 billion hours or 80 million days, or 3.3 million years. The fastest human-made object was the Parker Space Probe, traveling at 635,266 km per hour. Meaning it would take roughly 2 months to go from one side to the other. For reference, the earth takes 1 year to travel that distance at over 100.000 km per hour.

[@Sealhunt]

Just imagine if the Borg had found this thing afterward? They would have been damn near unstoppable.

[@Lupinthe3rd.]

No at the end the star in the sphere had unstable solar flares and the prior inhabitants left. it was enough to threaten the enterprise i doubt the borg would have been able to handle it

[@williampyle8635]

EVER read "Ring World"....a similar concept??

[@mysterymayhem7020]

I really wish they explored this on camera. Met the inhabitants and so forth.

[@Glidescube]

in the episode the the sun inside the sphere is becoming unstable and the sphere was abandoned they never said who built it but they did leave a small archaeological team behind to study it.

[@randomdude8202]

It has a story aftermath, a star trek game carry the story further later

[@PNWJMc]

There is a book based on further exploration. Unfortunately the publisher made several bizarre alterations to the story and it is considered a pretty poor work.

[@tractorfeed7602]

I'm curious to see what would a horizon sloping upward look like

[@Glidescube]

@@tractorfeed7602 the episode had some inside shots. there was ince a diagram in how the while rhing worked. the builder had but thes massive blocks in orbut clise ti the sun ti give it a sense of "day and night" . it had enormous oceans and teleporters to various parts of the sphere and huge swaths of wildlands.

[@Jason_Wilhelm]

If I remember correctly this sphere was uninhabited.

[@BYERE]

Correct, as the star had become unstable, so it had been abandoned

[@edfrawley4356]

With the exception of one being locked in the pattern buffer of the crashed Federation ship

[@xehilo]

You'd think that a species advanced enough to build that sphere, would be able to stabilize the star they built it around.

[@BYERE]

@@xehilo Physically constructing something like the Dyson Sphere... as much of a marvel of engineering as it would be... doesn't automatically make those same engineers able to adjust a celestial body without risking far worse happening. You also wouldn't have to understand how a star works in order to build something around it. I could build an orb of Lego around a working lightbulb, but I wouldn't go touch the lightbulb if it starts flickering (partially because it'd be too hot to touch, and also because I wouldn't know how to fix it and stop it flickering)

[@girlgarde]

That was massively disappointing to hear when they first said that but I was also puzzled as to why whoever built the sphere couldn't just make the star be stable again. Even the Federation with its limited tech compared to whoever built the Dyson Sphere can affect stars with their tinkering so why couldn't the builders?

[@jwiese100]

Freeman Dyson himself never actually took his hypothesis seriously he thought this was just nonsense but it was still a fun episode

[@郑颍]

At no stage did Dyson propose a sphere. What he did suggest was a series of disconnected habitats in orbit. He proposed it a serious method of gaining virtually unlimited energy by human standards.

[@jwiese100]

@@郑颍 really? What think happened is he was bored and thought something up for shits and giggles.

[@郑颍]

@@jwiese100 I follow his work as a fellow physicist.

[@jwiese100]

@@郑颍 cool

[@郑颍]

@@jwiese100 He was a seriously good physicist.

[@KingFireball7]

Always loved this discovery and the mystery surrounding it

[@RonK]

there's a social theory that people inside a sphere would totally stop being inventors over the centuries - due to endless resources and endless space to live in, there would be no challenge anymore which is usually the main force for inventions (Yes, I know, war is one of those challenges, but lack of place to live or lack of food, too). Here you simply move on to the next planet-sized prairie to avoid any conflicts. And since it's to big to comprehend, people would stop "exploring for new ways to India" or unknown continents

[@victorjohnson7512]

While inside, they stocked up on vacuums.

[@---df5sr]

A sphere the size of earths orbit and they just happen to find the front door 😂😂😂😂

[@peteabrh-fairest9463]

I love the way they get the circumference of this Dyson sphere completely wrong in comparison to the size of the ship If that wasn't factor circumference of this particular Dyson sphere the ship would not be visible.....

[@Syberz]

Considering the size of this thing, we should not be seeing any sort of curve.

[@Skull-in-the-house]

@2:05 when the ship was coming up to the sphere you would not see the curvature of it as seen on screen IDK why star trek universe always gets perspective wrong buy Voyager beginning does it too with the rings of Saturn.

[@EltimarGaming]

No one is going to mention how fast Data is? Picard, Riker, and Data are all at the same terminal. Riker and Picard turn around and Data is already at Helm.

[@maddslothii2532]

Yup I was looking to see if anyone else commented on it... but remember in "The Naked Now" how fast data put the Isolinear chips back in?

[@The_Invisible_Hand]

0:45 What's shining light on the right side of the Dyson sphere? They just finished saying there were no (other) stars around.

[@-Big_Big]

amazing the sphere is not brought up ever again. this find SHOULD have been the most important ever for the federation to examine and learn as much as possible from. they should have poured in all their attention to this, since building a new one around a stable star would bring about endless potential for a space faring society

[@GamerX51]

This Dyson Sphere does make an appearance in the Star Trek Online MMO. One entire Episode of the Game is about this Dyson Sphere and another Dyson Sphere that it's connected to.

[@Acc0rd79]

They really should have went back and did a full discovery of the sphere, imagine if they could figure out who built it or why? The civilization who built it would be far superior in technology and could have been thousands of years old. So many questions left unanswered....but we got tons of info about Datas Cat.... /facepalm.

[@johnlux6635]

Dyson was not the first to advance this idea. He was inspired by the 1937 science fiction novel Star Maker

[@maolo76]

I wish they would explore the interior surface to see if there are life inside. I wonder who built it.

[@JLange642]

Well, they DID "ring the bell" as Riker suggested!

[@VergilArcanis]

A dyson sphere would be highly impractical for day-night cycles. But capturing the radiant energy off of the sun would be pretty spiffy

[@johncochran8497]

Not necessarily. A Dyson sphere does not have to be a single solid structure. In fact, it would be more practical for it to be many individual objects in carefully coordinated orbits around the star such that all of the energy from the star is intercepted by said objects. Such a system could have multiple spheres at different distances from the central star so inner orbiting objects could cast shadows on objects further away to simulate day/night cycles.

[@VergilArcanis]

@@johncochran8497 that's what i had thought too, which a series of overlapping ring-frames would get the job done. Innermost would have to be a dedicated energy-collection type to augment the spacing in the frames

[@scottmcshannon6821]

the real problem with a dyson sphere is the lack of gravity, since the mass is al around you there is no downward pull. you could spin it, but then you would only have gravity around the equator.

[@VergilArcanis]

@@scottmcshannon6821 i hadn't considered that, although if the mass of the sphere at any one point is great enough, don't you think it too would act like a gravitational body?

[@TheFlyingZulu]

@@scottmcshannon6821 Maybe with the advanced technology required to build this thing, they figured out how to nullify or change the gravity in a way that was natural to humans on a typical planet. It is science fiction after all right?! lol

[@patrickroe5926]

Geez, you would think they would have smarts enough NOT to get too close before they know what they are dealing with!

[@thestaffrockband]

Damn if Picard isn't an immediate walking history book; impressive! LOL...

[@magicmulder]

Everyone’s a 20th century expert for some reason. 😂

[@galengene5828]

Love this episode. 😀

[@Misscleo420]

This show is so nostalgic. And one of my favorite theories ❤

[@SmartassX1]

Seriously tho, where could they have obtained the materials to build it? They'd need to mine all the matter from like a few billion earth-size planets. That's like an entire galaxy worth of plants mined out of existence, just to have that 1 structure around a star that will expire eventually.

[@robertweekley5926]

Ward: "We're being pulled inside!" Dyson Sphere: "Come to Papa!" 😂

[@SRX2004]

One of my favorite episodes. But if this sphere was as large as they say, almost as large as the earths orbit around the sun, when the Enterprise flew next to it the scale was wrong. Shouldn't have seen any curvature at all or if any very little.

[@SeansModelBuilds]

They might have been far away at first; no curvature at all when they approached the portal.

[@milesparris4045]

Fish eye lens.

[@TheBrowncoat2112]

@2:04 what star is in close enough proximity to have that much light reflected off the surface of the sphere of the sphere was supposed to have surrounded the entire host star?

[@casbot71]

And Starfleet completely ignored it afterwards, never examined the amazing technology to see if they could reverse engineer it. And never settled a body with more livable surface area than every other Planet in the Federation - in the Alpha Quadrant.

[@MrBlueBurd0451]

It's brought up again in the continued story of Star Trek Online, where it is discovered that this dyson sphere was constructed by the Iconians, and that due to the conditions of the star inside, it's uninhabitable.

[@hibiscus779]

Admittedy, a Dyson sphere with these parameters has 600 million times the surface area of Earth. Imagine it's inhabited - it would make all the established canon powers completely irrelevant with a scaling space force and population.

[@peterjackson5373]

But they have no resources left. You end up in the steam age as you cannot mine a Dyson sphere. There’s no fossil fuel and never will be. Also the water cycle causes erosion. So all your soil ends up in the sea and you can’t grow food. Ring worlds and plate worlds make more sense. You still need some way of mining asteroids or other planets to carry on advancing your tech. Larry Niven and Iain M Banks have explored these concepts

[@ZachsMind]

Imagine running a Star Trek Roleplaying Campaign that takes place soon after this episode. In the year 2370, Starfleet organizes a special scientific team to investigate the Dyson Sphere and prepare for all contingencies including first contact possibilities if its determined there are intelligent species. What's uncovered is that billions of years ago there were sentient hyperintelligent beings of immense resources who put this sphere together, but they evolved into multiple other species who have since died out. There ARE lifesigns but they're rare and faint. Roughly a few million civilizations scattered across the inside of the sphere, each remote from each other, each remarkably different from each other. At one time this place was teeming with life but a lot can happen in a few billion years. Now it's but a shell of its former self. Yet there's hope. Promise. Possibility. It could flourish again. First they must discover what decimated the previous population, because there are indicators whatever that was, it could happen again.

[@danielk5780]

The main issue: Sun's are unpredictable. One large solar flare, and your perfect world has just transformed into a microwave.

[@lekoman]

"Now it's a shell of its former self."

[@paulpolpiboon9535]

What a frikin awesome show

[@MisterRorschach90]

If I lived in a sci fi universe I would have Dyson spheres built around every single star that isn’t required for life and then use weird unknown technology to siphon all the energy into me turning me into a demi god.

[@Nuvendil]

You are basically desribing a Type 3 Civilization.

[@LTDANMAN44]

wait a second....data gets up at 0:20 with riker and picard then appears back in his seat?

[@absolutelynothingtoseehere]

Dyson didn't envision a single physical structure like this, which wouldn't be possible.

[@callen8908]

Agreed, semicircular rings would be feasible but still incredibly challenging to construct. The outward pressure and solar flares would have no where to go and I’m not seeing vents

[@CollectorChronicles]

This scene reminds me of a movie I saw. The name escapes me at the mome-….ah….aahh…..”Ah-Chewie!” 🤧

[@spikedpsycho2383]

Dyson never postulated a purely solid sphere. but a menagerie of satellites and colonies jn a swarm or arranged cluster. Because a solid sphere would have no way of disposing waste heat

[@colin8696908]

also a solid sphere can't survive the gravity using currently understood materials.

[@stargazer7644]

A solid sphere of that size would have an enormous surface area facing an essentially absolute zero cold sink of deep space. It would dispose of its "waste heat" exactly the same way a star does, but at a much, much lower temperature.

[@spikedpsycho2383]

@@stargazer7644 that requires a heat sink covering a surface area of considerable size. The inside image of the sphere we see habitable volume.......Also not mentioned how a solid sphere would dispose or handle coronal mass ejections

[@stargazer7644]

@@spikedpsycho2383 The entire outside surface of the sphere is a heat sink. It will get warm on the inside from the 1200 W/m^2 solar radiation, and any waste heat that isn't converted into useful energy in the sphere will simply radiate off the cold side into empty space. As for CMEs, they would impact the sphere. That's just another type of energy from the star, and that's part of what the sphere harvests. Same for the solar wind. If desired, ionized material could be guided to particular areas with magnetic fields and energy extracted, the same way Earth does it.

[@blaster915]

This is the equivalent of finding the Mass Relays in Mass Effect, jump started entire space civilizations!!

[@TahoeTime4457]

My one problem? The enterprise looks like its in a system with the light of the star shining on it. So does the Dyson Sphere. Where’s the light coming from if the star is inside the sphere? I get its so that its not all dark and its for cinematic effect but still interesting to point out.

[@markhine3232]

The light inside is the sun that the sphere was built around.

[@MarianKeller]

Very fitting quote: “Where’s the light coming from?” … “Same place as the music”

[@ishidan01]

@@markhine3232 that's the problem. The ship is outside the sphere. From where comes the light on it?

[@TheOiseau]

@@ishidan01 Another nearby star perhaps, with the whole Sphere orbiting it. Originally a binary star system, the Sphere was built around one star. It's scifi, anything goes.

[@TahoeTime4457]

@@MarianKeller Niiice

[@jankemal8919]

So, what is lighting the outside of the sphere?

[@xamalion7334]

Imagine the Borg assimilating this and making it the Queens Sphere. 👌

[@earlwallace2015]

Iconians would have definitely stopped them.

[@Zurround]

@@earlwallace2015 The Iconians could probably have defeated Species 8472 From Star Trek Voyager who kicked the Borg's ass. Their technology was absurdly advanced. The galactic empire of Star Wars is lucky they never had to face a race like the Iconians. The greatest engineering feat of that universe "Death stars" are space stations each much smaller than Earth's moon.

[@kris8165]

The greatest discovery in the Starfleet's history,and it gets only 1 episode 😂 Imagine if that boring Borg grabbed the hold of it 😅

[@trevorwatkins3968]

It's so funny I remember reading this in a paper back novel,three weeks into reading it I was about to watch star trek the next generation on TV and hey guess what Its Scottie.

[@jje984]

Only Star Trek could reveal a Dyson Sphere and then completely forget about it as if it never happened.

[@c3piano]

It would be nice to know what season and episode this came from.

[@darrennew8211]

You could click the link in the description, yes?

[@Lupinthe3rd.]

Here is an interesting question. How would a dyson sphere react when the star goes nova?

[@sqwalnoc]

It would blow up I imagine

[@thomasfletcher4765]

" we're being pulled inside ! " Thank you captain obvious 🤣

[@blue18404]

Looks more real than any CGI.

[@jimbopumbapigsticks]

This episode would have much better with them exploring the Dyson sphere. The Scotty stuff is fine but that could have been a separate episode in itself.

[@Astro_Guy_1]

The Enterprise stumbles upon a Megastructure built by a civilization that must have been 1000 times more powerful than the Borg, and not only was it never mentioned again, but it was the *B-plot*

[@Twirlyhead]

They make great vacuum cleaners too.

[@edthejester]

Im just glad the Borg never found it

[@williamjones7163]

Not only do they make a really good vacuum but an entire sphere too.

[@sharonbraselton3135]

Yes they ud

[@SicilianStealth]

I met Freeman Dyson at The Wainwright House on Milton Point at home in Rye New York.

[@Four_Channel_]

My question is, how the hell did Data get down there so quickly?

[@avon_c6199]

Probably a little inconsistency between cuts. When they began the scene where Frakes and Stewart walk down the other way, Spiner probably had his marker/position to walk off from too far upfront...notice the faint shadow at 0:24 rushing by infront of Worf.

[@justinhamric6632]

Data is many times stronger and faster than a human. That’s why Picard and Ryker aren’t surprised. They’re used to Data hurdling the center rail and landing in the seat, so he can quickly conduct scanning and analysis from both consoles.

[@Jeriun]

Wait a dang second. At 0:20 Picard and Riker was standing behind Data at his terminal when they walked away. You can even see the ready room. At 0:24 Picard and Riker are walking behind Worf towards Data. Was this video clipped, or was this how it was in the show? I honestly can't remember.