Dyson's Sphere?

[Northpin]

With the numbers of ships and FC's now in this game, if we all parked around our sun (Sol), we could block out all light produced by the sun, leaving our solar system in the dark.

In theory, at least....

Nah. 30000 carriers, 3.2km each? Not a chance to dyson our Sun.
You'd need to cover like 4.4 million km to circle it at its surface.

At 10 ls distance you'd need 19 millions km to circle it - that is about 5.9 million carriers to have a ringworld with the width of a carrier (700m)

 

[Caydran]

In theory, I doub't you could tell a Dyson's Sphere from a Black Hole.

Given the gravity well of both, they would act very much the same.

So, could it be that some of the Black Holes we see in space today, with our telescopes are actually Dyson's Spheres?

 

[Riverside]

In theory, I doub't you could tell a Dyson's Sphere from a Black Hole.

Given the gravity well of both, they would act very much the same.

So, could it be that some of the Black Holes we see in space today, with our telescopes are actually Dyson's Spheres?

I don't think you've got that exactly right. A Dyson Sphere could potentially block all EM emissions from a star, I suppose potentially it could block all forms of energy, masking the mass of anything inside it. It would take an extreme leap of the imagination to think it could make the presence of that mass invisible to the outside observer but let's go with that.

Now of course a black hole is dark because no light escapes but the effect of gravity and how it affects nearby objects, light lensing etc would very much be detectable at a distance.

So both would be 'dark', but I don't think the detectable effects would be the same at all.

I'm assuming the shell of the Dyson sphere would have negligible mass in comparison to the star it surrounds but even if the mass of the shell were tremendous I think it being a shell & not a point source of mass would still have very different gravitational effects. I've read some stuff about the mass of a BH being 'stored' at the event horizon not the singularity but I'm not 100% on that (is anyone? ), I think for a Dyson sphere to be practical it would need to have a radius in the order of planetary orbits not event horizons.

 

[Fizzatron]

In theory, I doub't you could tell a Dyson's Sphere from a Black Hole.

Given the gravity well of both, they would act very much the same.

So, could it be that some of the Black Holes we see in space today, with our telescopes are actually Dyson's Spheres?

I agree with Riverside about the black hole part, but it may be possible that they could show up as a brown dwarfish type star?

 

[WreckRoot]

In theory, I doub't you could tell a Dyson's Sphere from a Black Hole.

Given the gravity well of both, they would act very much the same.

So, could it be that some of the Black Holes we see in space today, with our telescopes are actually Dyson's Spheres?

There's absolutely no way we could mistake a dyson sphere with a black hole, if only by its size and gravitational pull exerted.
And we don't see any stellar-mass black holes anywhere, we only see regular stars behaving weirdly as if tugged on by something very heavy. The only black holes that we allegedly saw (although to me it's still a stretch) are SMBHs which are just incomparable in size and the effect they have on nearby objects.

I agree with Riverside about the black hole part, but it may be possible that they could show up as a brown dwarfish type star?

More likely.

 

[WR3ND]

Not sure I want more science fantasy tech in my science fiction game, unless I can use it to get to the LMC somehow, but to each their own.

 

[BDelacroix]

With the numbers of ships and FC's now in this game, if we all parked around our sun (Sol), we could block out all light produced by the sun, leaving our solar system in the dark.

In theory, at least....

One might think, but space is big. Really really big.

 

[BDelacroix]

At what distance from the Sun?

4 * m_pi * r ^ 2 is a LOT of surface area when speaking of distances that make sense in space.

 

[Caydran]

I was actually referring to an article from Cornell University and Oxford Academic.

My fault, if you got the impression it was my idea.

 

[Riverside]

I was actually referring to an article from Cornell University and Oxford Academic.

My fault, if you got the impression it was my idea.

I remember reading somewhere about a civilisation at the end of time using energy from black holes as one last energy source before the heat death of the universe & thinking that's a pretty desperate measure

 

[WR3ND]

I remember reading somewhere about a civilisation at the end of time using energy from black holes as one last energy source before the heat death of the universe & thinking that's a pretty desperate measure

A couple decades ago I read a book called Star Quake about an alien ecosystem and it's dominant race that lived on a neutron star of all places, I think it was. They were about the same mass as humans but much smaller and lived much quicker lives, progressing in their evolution and scientific progress before human eyes, as it were, that were visiting in their own spaceship far above the star. Not sure what that has to add to this conversation other than that it reminded me of it.

Cheers.

 

[Tividar]

A couple decades ago I read a book called Star Quake about an alien ecosystem and it's dominant race that lived on a neutron star of all places, I think it was. They were about the same mass as humans but much smaller and lived much quicker lives, progressing in their evolution and scientific progress before human eyes, as it were, that were visiting in their own spaceship. Not sure what that has to add to this conversation other than that it reminded me of it.

Cheers.

Sequel to Dragon's Egg. Enjoyable reads.

 

[WreckRoot]

I was actually referring to an article from Cornell University and Oxford Academic.

My fault, if you got the impression it was my idea.

Well, dyson spheres are usually considered for stars, not bhs, hence the confusion.

If we're talking about a Dyson sphere around a bh, then yes, a bh with a Dyson sphere around it would likely behave very much like an awkwardly heavy brown/black dwarf or a gas giant (depending on sphere radius and implementation details).

 

[aRJay]

I suppose we should also raise the question of what sort of Dyson sphere we are talking about, after all there are more than half a dozen things that would count from a cloud of power satellites to the solid surface ones.

I had half forgotten just how old the power sat variant is and I have read Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker. 1937

 

[varonica]

Why would Thargoids (or Guardians worlds) need apostrophes?

I thought I was being pedantic, this it taking it to the extreme, well done I say!

 

[varonica]

I suppose we should also raise the question of what sort of Dyson sphere we are talking about, after all there are more than half a dozen things that would count from a cloud of power satellites to the solid surface ones.

I had half forgotten just how old the power sat variant is and I have read Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker. 1937

Last and First Men was a good read as well, enjoyable with many interesting ideas like terraforming and genetic engineering! it's surprising how old these ideas are when you look back on their history.

 

[Christopher Roberto]

In theory, I doub't you could tell a Dyson's Sphere from a Black Hole.

Stars likely emit continuous gravitational waves due to asymmetries that wouldn't be present in a point-like object.

 

[varonica]

Stars likely emit continuous gravitational waves due to asymmetries that wouldn't be present in a point-like object.

Oh agreed entirely, now that we are finally working with gravity waves it appears they provide a lot of information about their source.

In theory, I doub't you could tell a Dyson's Sphere from a Black Hole.

Given the gravity well of both, they would act very much the same.

So, could it be that some of the Black Holes we see in space today, with our telescopes are actually Dyson's Spheres?

The bending of light would be entirely different around a Dyson Sphere compared to a black hole, the length of occlusion of background stars would be far larger for a Dyson Sphere than a black hole, other things will affect data, like is the Dyson Sphere rotating? How thick is it and is it a continuous thickness all over and etc...

I very much doubt we would mistake a Dyson Sphere for a black hole even if we only considered visible light. You may not see something, but you can tell it's size by its distance and the occlusion of background stars. A black hole with the diameter of a Dyson Sphere, let's say the orbit of the Earth, would be an enormous super massive black hole, larger than Sag A* which has a radius of around Venus orbit, so by the effect of gravity alone on surrounding mass you could tell it wasn't a black hole.

 

[Tikanderoga]

The surface area of the Sun is approx 6.1 trillion square kilometres.

Even if you gave every player a FC and every ship in the game, we’re still going to be just a little short of being able to block out all sunlight - and that’s just plonking everything directly on the surface. If you want to do it at the orbital radius of a Dyson Sphere…well

Well, that is the WHOLE surface. You wouldn't need to block all of it. Half would do.

Given that one FC is 3200m x 729m, one carrier blocks out 2.3 Km2.
So with that in mind, if you'd plaster them right on the surface, you'd need 1.3 trillion fleet carriers. That's to completely dark out the sun.
might be easier to just shield off half the earth and shroud it in darkness.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

dyson spheres in the game would be awesome to see.

Part of the problem is, you wouldn't see them. At least if you were on the outside of one. You'd kind of not see them by the fact that in a massive plane in front of you there would be nothing to see, not even stars.