White dwarf Dyson sphere

[Spaceception]

Oooh, I just found out about this today, but it's all in the title, what if advanced civilizations could build a Dyson sphere around white dwarfs instead?

Overall, it may be more realistic, and infrared transmissions would be much lower too. On top of that, the distance that you would put the shell around would be close enough that you wouldn't need artificial gravity.

And as it turns out, that the building material for a 1m shell would be less than our Moon, while a better, 10m shell would be comparable to a terrestrial planet.

Drawbacks? It seems to need much stronger materials than your typical Dyson sphere.

Here's the paper; https://arxiv.org/abs/1503.04376

And the video where I learned about this; 

 

[kerbiloid]

They should wait a little, until the white dwarf gets cooler (say, ~6000 K), so its peak wavelength would be no more X-ray, but yet not IR.

[PB666]

7 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

Oooh, I just found out about this today, but it's all in the title, what if advanced civilizations could build a Dyson sphere around white dwarfs instead?

Overall, it may be more realistic, and infrared transmissions would be much lower too. On top of that, the distance that you would put the shell around would be close enough that you wouldn't need artificial gravity.

And as it turns out, that the building material for a 1m shell would be less than our Moon, while a better, 10m shell would be comparable to a terrestrial planet.

Drawbacks? It seems to need much stronger materials than your typical Dyson sphere.

Here's the paper; https://arxiv.org/abs/1503.04376

And the video where I learned about this; 

 

The dyson sphere will emit infrared no matter what, life has a temperature range, that temperature has a emmission range. The surface of the object has emmissivity of Q = EsT⁴

See other thread on solar electric power. The signature may be lower black body peak frequency compared to that around main sequence star but it would still be present.

[Bill Phil]

Dyson Speres aren't particularly practical... swarms may be, but by the time you can build one, you likely don't need one. Of course, if you can create an entirely automated way to build it using material in the solar system in question, then you could potentially gain energy while building one... Would still take a while though.

[Nuke]

a ringworld perhaps? with a swarm collecting the energy it misses. the main habitable surface would be the ring. 

[kerbiloid]

It's hard to imagine a purpose for quadrillions of unemployed persons in a hi-tech fully automated world.

And if they wanna get moar energy, they would make a swarm of reflectors following the star position and redirecting its light into the receiver.
(Though, I'm afraid the receiver should be several times bigger that the star to keep its temperature reasonable)

Edited November 20, 2017 by kerbiloid

[Nuke]

i like to think of it as more of a beamed energy plant. sure it will support a significant population, but most of that would be dedicated to maintenance of the whole system. you can only do so much with automation. this is just a power plant scaled up. its beaming power to vessels traveling between stars, other colonies, interstellar communications, etc. might as well throw in some manufacturing hubs in there as well since you have the real estate. though some assemblies would be better assembled where the gravity is lower, again thats a place to beam power too. and unemployed people are not an issue provided there are enough resources to go around. this line of thought may seem absurd to our capitalistic way of life. but if you can build it then your species is already post scarcity. people can actually persue their interests and find an actual purpose as opposed to having to go where the money to pointlessly level up a bank account so you can buy things rather than create them. this is why i consider fight club dystopian fiction. the fact of the matter is that unemployed people, if not distracted by material things and staying alive (and not mentally ill like much of the unemployed people you see in our society, or in the 3rd world where there just arent any jobs for the uneducated, unskilled labor force), will eventually find something to do. they will try and crack the hard problems that an interstellar empire will face, like what to do about those damn aliens. 

Edited November 20, 2017 by Nuke

[kerbiloid]

28 minutes ago, Nuke said:

this line of thought may seem absurd to our capitalistic way of life. but if you can build it then your species is already post scarcity. people can actually persue their interests and find an actual purpose as opposed to having to go where the money to pointlessly level up a bank account so you can buy things rather than create them. this is why i consider fight club dystopian fiction.

The capitalism/socialism doesn't matter here, as well as money.
1. Say, 5% of people are both clever and nerdish and do the science, 5% of people are talented and do the arts, but 90% are mostly not. A fully automated world is a total recreation without getting tired for them. This is not good for their personal importance and self-respect (which in turn will cause a lot of drama, vandalism and degradation, but this is inevitable).
2. When you have seen 100 versions of "Perseus and Andromeda" painting by different authors, the 101st one will bring nothing except yawning to you. The greater is masterpieces amount — the lesser is attraction and importance of any of them.

So, a trillion of humans would split into small local several million groups, not interested in each other's creativity.

Like an infinite Minecraft world.

So, why should one want a million of self-isolated similar civilizations instead of more or less one?

Edited November 20, 2017 by kerbiloid

[Nuke]

19 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

The capitalism/socialism doesn't matter here, as well as money.
1. Say, 5% of people are both clever and nerdish and do the science, 5% of people are talented and do the arts, but 90% are mostly not. A fully automated world is a total recreation without getting tired for them. This is not good for their personal importance and self-respect (which in turn will cause a lot of drama, vandalism and degradation, but this is inevitable).
2. When you have seen 100 versions of "Perseus and Andromeda" painting by different authors, the 101st one will bring nothing except yawning to you. The greater is masterpieces amount — the lesser is attraction and importance of any of them.

So, a trillion of humans would split into small local several million groups, not interested in each other's creativity.

Like an infinite Minecraft world.

So, why should one want a million of self-isolated similar civilizations instead of more or less one?

because i can only watch the same sitcoms so many times before i have to turn that idiot box off and go work on a project. sure there are people who would just play minecraft all day every day for some reason. some of those people might want more out of life than that. say you live in a type 2 civilization, are you really going to want to stay home and play video games?

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, Nuke said:

i have to turn that idiot box off and go work on a project

Congratulations, you're in the first 10%, you can make a project. A lot of free time is not a problem for you, but a possibility.

While you can get enough supplies for the project. Don't forget that unlikely somebody can pay for it without his/her job and salary, so in the future socium the project better would be enough significant to get a piece of public pie.
A problem here: the more people have to fill their time with at least something, the more similar projects will be standing in the queue for the pie.
So, if you are going to make a scientific art masterpiece, you would be ready to be the 234th in the queue.
And the bigger is the civilisation - the longer is the queue.

So, a trillion person civilisation would just spread in thousands pieces with their own queues, hostile to each other. With their own pies and relatively short queues to them.

[Nuke]

6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Congratulations, you're in the first 10%, you can make a project. A lot of free time is not a problem for you, but a possibility.

While you can get enough supplies for the project. Don't forget that unlikely somebody can pay for it without his/her job and salary, so in the future socium the project better would be enough significant to get a piece of public pie.
A problem here: the more people have to fill their time with at least something, the more similar projects will be standing in the queue for the pie.
So, if you are going to make a scientific art masterpiece, you would be ready to be the 234th in the queue.
And the bigger is the civilisation - the longer is the queue.

So, a trillion person civilisation would just spread in thousands pieces with their own queues, hostile to each other. With their own pies and relatively short queues to them.

and this is why were still a type 0 civilization.