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At one AU – which is the distance of the orbit of the Earth, the Sun emits 1.4 x 103 J/sec per square meter. [note 2] That’s 1.4 x 109 J/sec per square kilometer. At one-third efficiency, that’s 4.67 x 108 J/sec for the entire Dyson sphere. That sounds like a lot, right? But here’s the thing – if you work it out, it will take 4.28 x 1028 seconds [1.35 sextillion years] for the solar collectors to obtain the energy needed to dismantle Mercury. That’s about 120 trillion years. [note 3]
— Alex Knapp [20]
Other publications including Popular Science, Vice, and skeptical blog Weird Things followed up on this exchange. [21] [22] [23] None of them note the above numerical inaccuracies, although Weird Things does point out Plait's misunderstanding regarding bootstrapping, which Knapp agreed with in an update to his post. [20] [23] James Nicoll noted in his blog that Knapp seriously underestimated the area of a sphere. [24]
A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its solar power output. The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to imagine how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy requirements once those requirements exceed what can be generated from the home planet's resources alone. Because only a tiny fraction of a star's energy emissions reaches the surface of any orbiting planet, building structures encircling a star would enable a civilization to harvest far more energy.
Space colonization is the use of outer space or celestial bodies other than Earth for permanent habitation or as extraterrestrial territory.
Transhumanism is a philosophical and intellectual movement which advocates the enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies that can greatly enhance longevity and cognition.
The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it is capable of using. The measure was proposed by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in 1964 and was named after him.
The sievert is a unit in the International System of Units (SI) intended to represent the stochastic health risk of ionizing radiation, which is defined as the probability of causing radiation-induced cancer and genetic damage. The sievert is important in dosimetry and radiation protection. It is named after Rolf Maximilian Sievert, a Swedish medical physicist renowned for work on radiation dose measurement and research into the biological effects of radiation.
Transhuman, or trans-human, is the concept of an intermediary form between human and posthuman. In other words, a transhuman is a being that resembles a human in most respects but who has powers and abilities beyond those of standard humans. These abilities might include improved intelligence, awareness, strength, or durability. Transhumans appear in science-fiction, sometimes as cyborgs or genetically-enhanced humans.
David Pearce is a British transhumanist philosopher. He is the co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association, currently rebranded and incorporated as Humanity+. Pearce approaches ethical issues from a lexical negative utilitarian perspective.
A matrioshka brain is a hypothetical megastructure of immense computational capacity powered by a Dyson sphere. It was proposed in 1997 by Robert J. Bradbury (1956–2011). It is an example of a class-B stellar engine, employing the entire energy output of a star to drive computer systems. This concept derives its name from the nesting Russian matryoshka dolls. The concept was deployed by Bradbury in the anthology Year Million: Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge.
Xenoarchaeology, a branch of xenology dealing with extraterrestrial cultures, is a hypothetical form of archaeology that exists mainly in works of science fiction. The field is concerned with the study of the material remains to reconstruct and interpret past life-ways of alien civilizations. Xenoarchaeology is not currently practiced by mainstream archaeologists due to the current lack of any material for the discipline to study.
Megascale engineering is a form of exploratory engineering concerned with the construction of structures on an enormous scale. Typically these structures are at least 1,000 km (620 mi) in length—in other words, at least one megameter, hence the name. Such large-scale structures are termed megastructures.
James J. Hughes is an American sociologist and bioethicist. He is the Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and is the associate provost for institutional research, assessment, and planning at UMass Boston. He is the author of Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future and is currently writing a book about moral bioenhancement tentatively titled Cyborg Buddha: Using Neurotechnology to Become Better People.
The Great Filter is the idea that in the development of life from the earliest stages of abiogenesis to reaching the highest levels of development on the Kardashev scale, there is a barrier to development that makes detectable extraterrestrial life exceedingly rare. The Great Filter is one possible resolution of the Fermi paradox.
The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) is a technoprogressive think tank that seeks to "promote ideas about how technological progress can increase freedom, happiness, and human flourishing in democratic societies." It was incorporated in the United States in 2004, as a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, by philosopher Nick Bostrom and bioethicist James Hughes.
The communication with extraterrestrial intelligence (CETI) is a branch of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) that focuses on composing and deciphering interstellar messages that theoretically could be understood by another technological civilization. The best-known CETI experiment of its kind was the 1974 Arecibo message composed by Frank Drake.
Postgenderism is a social, political and cultural movement which arose from the eroding of the cultural, psychological, and social role of gender, and an argument for why the erosion of binary gender will be liberatory.
The cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact is the corpus of changes to terrestrial science, technology, religion, politics, and ecosystems resulting from contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. This concept is closely related to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), which attempts to locate intelligent life as opposed to analyzing the implications of contact with that life.
Technosignature or technomarker is any measurable property or effect that provides scientific evidence of past or present technology. Technosignatures are analogous to biosignatures, which signal the presence of life, whether intelligent or not. Some authors prefer to exclude radio transmissions from the definition, but such restrictive usage is not widespread. Jill Tarter has proposed that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) be renamed "the search for technosignatures". Various types of technosignatures, such as radiation leakage from megascale astroengineering installations such as Dyson spheres, the light from an extraterrestrial ecumenopolis, or Shkadov thrusters with the power to alter the orbits of stars around the Galactic Center, may be detectable with hypertelescopes. Some examples of technosignatures are described in Paul Davies's 2010 book The Eerie Silence, although the terms "technosignature" and "technomarker" do not appear in the book.
Hypothetical technology is technology that does not exist yet, but that could exist in the future. This article presents examples of technologies that have been hypothesized or proposed, but that have not been developed yet. An example of hypothetical technology is teleportation.
Transhumanist politics constitutes a group of political ideologies that generally express the belief in improving human individuals through science and technology. Specific topics include space migration, and cryogenic suspension. It is considered the opposing ideal to the concept of bioconservatisim, as Transhumanist politics argue for the use of all technology to enhance human individuals.
Rendezvous with the Future is a 2022 television series commissioned by Bilibili and produced by BBC Studios which explores the science behind the science fiction of the award-winning writer Liu Cixin. The series premiered in China on 16 November 2022 and has been watched by a combined audience of more than 65 million.
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(help)Let's build a Dyson sphere! And why wouldn't we want to? By enveloping the sun with a massive array of solar panels, humanity would graduate to a Type 2 Kardashev civilization capable of utilizing nearly 100% of the sun's energy output. A Dyson sphere would provide us with more energy than we would ever know what to do with while dramatically increasing our living space. Given that our resources here on Earth are starting to dwindle, and combined with the problem of increasing demand for more energy and living space, this would seem to a good long-term plan for our species.
Forbes writer Alex Knapp takes his argument apart instead, crunching some numbers with the help of astronomer Phil Plait. Click through to Knapp's argument for the breakdown of joules needed to dismantle Mercury versus joules obtained by solar collectors. But the gist is that it would take 174 years to recover the energy input that it would take to blow up the lovely, geologically interesting innermost planet.
Knapp calculated (brilliantly, I might add) that, at its earliest stage, the Dyson sphere would take 120 trillion years to produce the energy needed to pillage Mercury. Even at full, Sun-encircling power, the sphere itself would take 174 years to dismantle Mercury. Knapp thus flips the kill switch: "If we're capable of generating the amount of energy right now that would take a Dyson Sphere 174 years to recover, why would we need to build a Dyson Sphere in the first place?"
Dvorsky proposed an unworkable plan weren't included in their calculations. Instead, they worked out that it would take so much energy to disassemble Mercury, that a 100% efficient Dyson shell of satellites would take us some 174 years to balance the energy budget. Now this would've been fine if we were talking about warp drives and negative energy/mass constructs, but we're not, and even after having it pointed out that Dvorsky was proposing a very energy amortized bootstrapping scenario, Alex Knapp was still sticking to his energy balancing guns."