Into the Dyson Sphere

plain sight? Like like where like you like in this room? Um, well, no, not this room, but somewhere out there in the universe because they were in here, they could be I mean, I guess they could be in the recording booth there, which is the I mean, we're in the sort of the podcast chamber, and then there's like this soundproof booth at the end that kind of looks like a like a phone booth, and I can't really see inside it,

So there could be an alien in there. Well, it could be like nano sized aliens like enmeshed in this and the foam batting, but around us. But could they be out there? You're saying they could be out there, like their whole planets could be hidden, their whole civilizations could be in their press in in the the universe, could be hidden from us. And so the whole reason that we haven't found aliens could be because we just cannot see them. That's right, it's a possibility, Steady. Have

you looked into this, Yes, they have. I don't think they've found anything yet. I don't know if they're doing much looking at the moment without the funding at all. But but yeah, so what does this have to do with the Dyson sphere? Uh, it's nothing to do with vacuums not. Yeah, that's every time I mentioned this podcast and my wife she was like, oh, you're doing what I'm back, I mean, she was, well, that's what an intriguing product that is, and the adventure that that everybody

thinks about this Dyson dude. Yes, but it's not about that, No, not about that at all. The dycen s fear is one of those things that imagine a lot of you do not need any explanation at all. You're like, yeah, totally diycens fear. I know what the concept is, but it is, Uh. It has shown up in various sci fi works, so like like anyone has ever watched like Star Treking next generation probably has seen one, or you've

read enough sci fi books. But for the rest of you, it is basically the concept of all right, we have the sun, and the sun is just this giant generator of energy, like our entire solar system is powered by

the sun. So how would one harness the energy of the sun if you wanted to greedily take all of it up, if you wanted to be like my sister when my family used to go out to have Mexican food for my one sister would order the cheese dip and then we would try and eat the cheese dip and she would say, no, no, this is my cheese dip because I ordered this cheese dip as my meal,

and so only I get to eat it. So if you were gonna have that, take that attitude and and use it on the sun, how would you collect all of it and make sure that you greedily um uh dipped all of the solar energy up on your chips for yourself. And I was an alien and you were an alien, I would laugh, so it you weren't okay if you were an alien, and take it with me,

or I would construct a giant shell around it. Exactly there you go, giant shell around it that were the interior of the shell absorbs the energy and doesn't let anything escape so that nobody else gets to enjoy the sun. And uh and all it's been. She's dipped for all aliens and only aliens, right, Yeah, So yeah, this is this idea of this Dyson sphere, ye sort of. I mean, yeah, this whole podcast is gonna be getting a little deeper into the idea what it means. But first, why don't

we call it a Dycen sphere. What's the Dyson part? We're of course talking about a man by the name of Freeman Dyson, who is a pretty amazing guy. He's still he's still with us. He's eighty seven years old, and um, he was something of a mathematics prodigy. Um he uh you know, a British extract, came here at the age of like twenty three and was like immediately contributing like in major ways to our understanding of physics,

unifying quantum and electrodynamic theory. And he he really, I mean he's been there through some through through the development of modern physics. Really, I mean some very exciting development, hanging out with Einstein, um Fineman bore Firmy, um up Oppenheimer. I mean, the list goes on. And he's and and

he's still just the sharp incredible mind. Yeah, he's an incredible thinker, and Oliver Sacks is a good friend of his and says like his plasticity of mind is amazing and the fact that he can still think so vitally at this age and have so many interesting ideas is pretty incredible when most twenty holds are walking around with probably less less imagination. And um, and not just imagination, but I mean, this is someone who has made huge

contributions to his field. Yeah, and uh, and was influenced by sci fi and uh, you know, grew up you know, reading about spaceships and he is a boy he sketched plans for a rocket ship that would you know, explore the universe. And then when he we got older, he actually worked on the the Ryan Project, which I've blogged about in the past. I can't remember if we've mentioned it. We may have mentioned it on a previous podcast. It was in passing. But the project to Ryan was was

going to uh be powered by nuclear detonations. Like imagine a spaceship where every time instead of like having like a thruster blast coming out the back, imagine some dude standing in the back of it and just pitching an atomic bomb out every time they needed to blast forward. A little bit. No, imagine how awful that would be

for us earthlings. Yeah, Like basically for the ship to leave the planet, you would have to have like multiple atomic detonations and then just steady atomic detonations to to

fly this thing around. But at the time, but there was a time when this was like, well when before we realized how environmentally disastrous this concept was, it was like, well, this could work as an actual solution, is an actual solution and uh um, and Dyson was one of these guys that was like, yeah, we can we can totally do this, we can build this and we'll be exploring uh we'll be flying off the Saturn within like two decades.

So he's he has a great futurist mind. Um, and when when he's handed a problem, he's great at tackling and figuring out, well, let me let me take a shot at it. So he took a shot at this question that we uh sort of fumbled with at the very beginning of this podcast, where are the aliens? If there is alien life elsewhere in the universe, why have

we not seen it? And for him, it's it's because they're all hiding out in this sphere right right, but not in a sense of like, oh, there are humans out there, let's not let them see us, let's get behind the these. No, it comes down to two to energy, all right, And we should probably just mentioned briefly the Kardaschef scale, which is the is not the Kardashian scale that would entail, but I'm sure it would be it

would entail something. Yeah, basically it comes into two. Uh. It comes immediately to this idea of let's look for alien life else elsewhere in the universe. What would it look like, how would we tell that it's there? And uh, there's the theory is that it would come down to energy consumption. So the scale divides civilizations into three basic types. There's a type one civilization, and I should point out that we are not yet a type one civilization, right.

You have to master this level of energy consumption and harnessing, right in order to be a type one. Yeah, it's like dungeons and dragons. You know, it's like you're you're leveling up, you know, to your right. Now you're a level zero, um, haffling thief. Right. If you get enough experience points, then you get to level one, and that comes with new benefits and this would be your your own planet, right Type one. So if if master masters of planetary Internet means they can harness the some energy

of an entire world. So we're not there yet. There's a lot of energy that we can't master, uh, that we can't that we haven't figured out how to how to use and uh, and so we're not there yet. Then there's a type too civilization, and they can summon the power of an entire star system. So basically they can enslave a star. They can take a star and

claim it as their own cheese dip. And then a type three civilization uh commands the energy on a galactic scale, all right, so they can they control a lot of cheese dip, an enormous amount of cheese dip, and and are using a kind of technology that we can barely fathom, like it's beyond our real understanding of how it might even work. So a lot of what we're talking about is type we're gonna be talking about in this podcast

is type two technology. But but some of it is is conceivably Type one as well, So it would make sense those type to civilization Likenalian civilization, which is a bit more complexness, a lot more complex would be able to construct this sphere. Right, yeah, yeah. The idea that that the Dyson hat was all right, if there are type too civilizations out there, what should we look for? Alright, well,

all right, there harn sing all this energy. They have to use all this energy to to power their civilization, to power their um, their interstellar transportation. How are they going to harness the energy of a star? And this was a scheme that he came up with. It basically comes down to to the to the idea of of just completely surrounding a son with energy collectors. All right, now, don't think of Uh. I've sort of avoided talking about the sci fi stuff, but I should probably mention it now.

Most people, I think have encountered the Dycen sphere on one episode of Star Trek the Next Generation called I think the Relic, and it had like the dude who played Scottie was in it. That's I mean, it's been like a decade since I've seen it. I remember that

there was a Dicen sphere. It was awesome because it was like this giant metal thing and you flew through an The Enterprise flights through a door in it, and on the inside there is a son and they're like continents and cities all on the interior of this giant's this giant sphere. Well, okay, see this is where it gets murky because, as you said, Dyson is someone who

can actually create real um solutions to problems. And so here's the stycen sphere that he actually is trying to create to not only explain aliens, but also saying, how can we actually harness the star here and all the energy we put these collectors around it? So there there are some actual real applications and and something that might

be able to be done a version of it. Right. Um, But then it's also butting up against sci fi right, and um it one is begetted by the other because if you look at Dyson's vision here, it's based on

a sci fi model. Yeah, it's very confusing that Dyson himself says, oh, you should really call it like a stapledon um of sphere because he was inspired by a book called Book by the Name of Starmaker by Olaf Staples Stapledon, which was written in so a lot of people encounter thet our trek thing, which is need in its own in its own way or they have encountered

it and in various other books. Uh. But but the original idea was was basically the idea of a lot of independent solo collectors um in orbit around a sun to the point where it almost blocked out right, like a hundred thousand of these collectors in orbit. Right if you see, like if you seen the movie Wally and when Wally leaves the planet and the spaceship, that the Earth is just choked by satellites, Like, imagine that kind of situation, except multiplied and in surrounding a start. Well.

And some people would even say that a satellite is sort of the first step to doing this anyway, um, and that there are multiple ways to try to play this out if we wanted too. Um. But so we should probably discuss the different types of spheres. Um. You know that the sci fi one that most people know, which is the type two, the one with a shell

around it and talking about what is feasible and what's not. Yeah, so the swarm one is pretty the one we're talking abut where it's like a lot of um independent pieces,

which is sometimes called a Dicen swarm one. Al So type one, and uh, and and the other thing about this is there's a lot of a lot of our dealings with the with the diycen sphere are kind of as a just imagineering, as a thought experiment is kind of a you see physicist online who are just kind of, I wonder how this would work, and they start crunching the numbers on it because it's you know, it's kind of amazing and it's a cool thing to do in

your spare time. So there are a lot of different just you know, just d y I your own sphere, yeah,

your own cosmic mega architecture. But but yeah, so if you're going for something rigid though, an actual like giant eggshell surrounding a sun like the star Trek one, like the star Trek one, um, Yeah, that's a slightly different thing because when you're doing like the gravitational effects of having all these little satellites around the Sun, it's just these independent little things that are affected, right, it's a swarm. But if you're talking about one giant structure, you're talking

about one enormous structure. I mean it's gonna be um like one or two astronomical units wide. An astronomical unit is the distance between the Earth and the Sun, um well huge. Yeah, And it captures our imagination because there's this idea that you could create out of this shell land so to speak, or habitable areas that would greatly outnumber the amount of land that we have here on Earth, and that on the interior, like a hollow earth kind

of a thing. Yes, yeah, And I actually had to draw several pictures of this to sort of cement it in my mind because you hadn't seen the Star Trek episodes, so he didn't have no no, but I still was thinking to myself what area is going to be habitable and what areas are going to have gravity and what aren't because if that sphere surrounding the Sun was not spinning, um, you know, there's not going to be any real I mean there's there might be depending on the mass of

the of the actual structure, there might be some gravity, but but ultimately you would need either artificial gravity, which does not exist in some according to some cannot exist, or you're going to need that thing to spin, to create to rotate, to create a kind of forces necessary for people to live on the inside of it. Right, And the other cool parture of this too, is that it really could be hospitable in the sense that if you are to enclose a star, you would actually have

the sort of temperatures that like room temperature that you enjoy. Now, um, you might not have gravity unless you're rotating, but you would have then, perhaps only at the equator. Yes, yes, exactly. So if you're going to enclose this thing, and um, you're gonna do it, right, then you're probably going to have a structure that's really heavy, right, and it's gonna you're also gonna want to rotate it, and it's going to have to withstand the force of the rotation. Right.

So that's where a lot of the problems come into I mean, this is again it's very interesting thought experiment, but we don't currently have the materials that could actually do this, that could withstand the rotation. Yeah, and then what if an asteroid hits it right, Yeah, you get knocked off center all of a sudden, you're colliding with the with the sun itself and melting. Yeah, that's no good.

That that does nobody any good. Yeah, but that would make a really great Bruce Willis film right there, I think where he has to save the dicensphere. Yeah. I just think if you're a civilization capable of building a dicensphere, Bruce Willis is probably not ranked too highly in your your backup plans if things go wrong. I mean, it seems like you probably have something more impressive to turn town.

I don't know. Do you talk to Jerry Barckheimer. Um. The other thing is you would have no night right right,

unless you had some sort of scheme in mind. Um and which which reminds me I believe you know we're talking about like only the this the slim center of it would be habitable, which kind of leads the idea of a ring world like the Larry Niven uh invented concept, which would be kind of like a dicensphere, but instead of being a giant circle that closes a star, it would be like a tire, like an artificial Rings of Saturn kind of situation, um, where you'd still have people

on the inside, but it would just be like the inside of a wheel. Uh. Like Like imagine a spare tire and there's a sign in the middle, and then there are cities all up in the inside of the tire. Okay, like that I've also heard it explained sort of like a canister too, right, So you're capped off. And then yeah, again the center where it's habitable. And this again is because you've got the gravitational effects or optimal at this sort of equator line of this area at the polls,

we would have virtually no gravity whatsoever. So yeah, and again there's the asteroid problem. Yeah, but this is the this is the sci fi configuration that we're talking about, this this other one that Dyson one would just go back to really quickly. Again, you've got these stationary or not stationary, but you've got these orbiting collectors of energy and that actually could be used in the future. You could store it the anti matter um there you know,

they're there are things you could do with this. Yeah, And the thing is you would you would collect all this energy with all these satellites and then in this scenario, you would being that to another uh, habitable space station or ship course or even a planet. Um. So that's

how that system would work. It would not be people necessarily living in each of all these little things orbiting the Sun, which would be kind of cool in and of itself that it's kind of like there's some arguments saying that we should have solar harvesters on the Moon and then being the energy back to our planet. It's some of the same concepts in play here. But of course the problem is we haven't even mastered our type one civilization yet, and that's we are really talking about

a type to civilization here. And there's some even more advanced like ideas. They're like I've seen some some proposals for a like a type three um dicen sphere which would would can use even thinner materials um and would it would be kind of like a big bubble around it. Um. I've seen like really a concepts. So I mean this would definitely be a tie three uh for the shock Shocked of Thruster concept, which would involve like basically the the star, like the structure around a star becomes a

spaceship and just takes a start with it. M M yeah, okay, so like again, but that's just crazy advanced future. Oh yeah, yeah, I'm just I'm trying to Yeah, that's not really screwing in my head right now, I have to say, but I do think it's an interesting proposition about the aliens, uh, not because I believe that we have aliens roaming around in the universe per se a little green men in that in that scenario. But what I do think is interesting is that people have brought us up as an

explanation for dark matter. And we'll get to that after this quick break. This presentation is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow, and we're back matter. Dark matter. It's a problem for us, right because there's a bunch of it. We don't know what it is. We know that's uh composing something like of of the universe, and yet we can't see it. But we know just with our mathematical equations that it's there. So people have said, okay,

if it's perhaps the situation here. The crux of it is that these aliens, who are you know, type two type three civilizations, have you know, created so many different dice in spheres that it's all being contained in there, like the universe is just more developed than we thought. Yeah, yeah, and we just can't spot it. Like you know, there's a there's a gazillion of these dice in spheres out there. It's like the SRaw right, Yes, it's like it's like

everywhere exactly exactly enclosed in the structure um. And it really is an intriguing idea, but there are a couple of reasons why I just couldn't be I'm sorry to say. Well. One of the big ones, of course, is just the amount of materials required, especially when you start talking about this solid enclosure, because but even the satellites to build that many satellites, I mean, the Sun is huge, guys, it's a it's it's tremendous. Most stars are enormous, and

and ours isn't even particularly enormous sun um. I mean, there there's there would be a problem just getting enough materials out of our own solar system to build this sort of right, there aren't enough heavy materials in the universe to actually construct the amount of dicen spheres that you would need to house all of these aliens hiding out and and hoarding the dark energy. Yeah, it's like the dark matter, and what are you building it for if the yeah? Yeah, so, but again it's very clever

the idea that they might be doing that. And then there's the fact that we could still detect a dicen sphere because it would be radiating key, right, Yeah, they would have to be jetting some radiation, you know. I mean it can only be self contained to a certain point. Uh far as physics go, they would they would would have to be able to detect it. So I mean that was the back to Dyson's original argument, Like he

was just saying, we haven't seen aliens. Well maybe this is what we should look for, because this is what their energy collection might be like, even sufficiently advanced technology. And and so um you know said he looked for it a few times, you know, and and they didn't see it. I mean, so we followed up on Dyson's idea and we're like, no, well we don't really see Dyson spares um and uh and Dyson didn't have I mean he's I've seen interviews where he's kind of dismissive

of the whole thing too. You know, he's just kind of like, oh, yeah, Dyson spares I did that. But yeah, He's like, that was this thought that I had on a Sunday afternoon. Yeah, So it's not like he was disappointed that that we haven't found a dicens fere yet. But the concept continues to really resonate with everyone. I mean,

besides the fact that it's just a really awesome idea. Uh, it's it's like the modern or like the space age Tower of Babble, you know, the Tower of Babble, the old you know Bible story idea of the of early man became became so pompous in their technological prowess that they built that they were building this tower that would they would actually they would touch the sky, that would they would rival heaven, that you'd be able to that the crews working on it would be able to shoot

arrows in the air and wing angels and watch them plummet to the ground. You know that it was just a yeah, but it was just an offense to God, and it was about how awesome man was. And so you know, we built towers like that every day now, so it's no big deal. But but but what's the space age version of that? It would be, what if we built something so big and so awesome that we

could fit the Sun in it? Like that's that's just that's just like we're just up in the game in terms of of what's the most pompous thing we could possibly do with technology. You know, we could build a shell around the Sun and then keep it for ourselves. Let's see. That's what I think is so awesome about it too, because it shows this level of creativity we cannot stop imagining for ourselves going beyond the boundaries that

that we know or suspect are there. Yeah, And that's the thing it's interesting to think about because in terms of because you could, you could come up with more grandiose ideas, like what if I built a giant steel egg and put the entire solar system in it? All Right, well that's grandi yes, but it's that's that's that's beyond the pale um. Whereas the idea of building a Dycen sphere is is advanced, you know, and it's certainly pushing the limits of what's possible in terms of matter within

our own solar system. But it's it's conceivable. We can say like, well, yes, that could possibly be. And so it's it's it's interesting to sit around and do the math and and uh and and and also just envisioned what it would be like to encounter it. Yeah, dycens an interesting cat um. I remember looking up some stuff for another podcast, doing some research, and there's an article in Slate and he was was that for this podcast

for the Moment podcast. No, not for the mom podcast, Uma, because that the mom podcast, we are always talking about a theoretical physicist. Um. But but anyway, he was talking

an article a slate. He was actually asked what our descendants could possibly look like a trillion years from now when the stars have disappeared in the universe is dark and freezing and so diffuse that it's practically empty from the article, and he said, the most plausible answer is that conscious life will take the form of interstellar dust clouds. So for him, consciousness is just a bunch of charged

particles hanging out in a dust cloud. And he actually thinks that our consciousness will merge into one great mind and actually be able to transcend the locality of the physicality. Really, see, that's beauty of ourselves. I know. I really think that he's a very um exciting thinker. I think that he's a thinker that I like thinking about. Well, excellent, UM, give me some give me some mail to think about. Okay, yeah, yeah, let's move on. Let's let's exit the dising sphere and

see what we have from our listeners. Here a listener mail from a listener by him of Zach the a k He says, uh high stuff to blow your mind. Crew. I just got the house Stuff Works app, which is available for various various platforms. Now, Um, definitely check that out and have started listening to your podcast. I really enjoy it. But have a notice that you don't have

any podcasts on space propulsion. I would love a podcast on a realistic deep space propulsion i e. Warp drive or hyper space or any other ideas floating around out there. Great show, keep it up. Um. Did we do one on solar sales or Mike? We did do one on seller sales, so yes, I check that out. Yeah, that's definitely space propulsion. Did we do want on warp? Uh? No, I wrote some articles on warp, so maybe I could brush up and we could do an episode on war

and the sellar sales. I think we talked about the the nuclear warheads too as as a means of propulsion. Oh yes, yes, yes, yeah um so so yeah, go back through the through the catalog. We we have touched on some space propulsion, but there are a number of cool concepts we we have it um, and this is kind of tied to It's not so much propulsion, but it's definitely in the same field as some of these uh, these these ideas about uh of taking science by the

horns and using it to conquer the galaxy. UM, here's another one. This one is from Eric. Eric writes a few years ago my local paper paper Rio Vista, California, about twenty miles northeast of San Francisco. UM wrote a headline that began a man walked into an an Isleton bar with a porcupine. Isleton is right across the river from Rio Vista. This sounds like the intro into yet

another joke, but it really happened. Apparently another patron of the bar was unhappy with this probably upset animal being there, and he and the porcupine owner began to fight. When police arrived, the porcupine owner fled on his motorcycle and led police on a on a high speed chase over the winding levy roads. UH. The man crashed and was arrested,

but the fate of the porcupine was unknown. UH. Indeed, there is so much wonderful, full and wrong with that story, and and it's it's great that he brought up headlines though, because, as we talked about in our Laughter podcast, which is responding to here um, laughter and humor. You know a lot of it comes down to this idea of the nine and in the violation, but also to like absurd parallels. And there's there's a classic saying about headlines. Uh that

dog bites man. It is not a good headline because that's very natural, you know, that's the natural recession of things that would happen. But man bites dog. That's a headline that gets our attention because it's it's in a way it's humorous because it's turning everything on its head and so getting the pants. Yeah, so it's dancing you,

it is panting you. And as a former newspaper person myself, I I really love a good, uh juicy headline like that, that that that plays with your your expectations, that turns words around on themselves, um and uh yeah. And any time that you can get a sort of man by dog effect in a headline, it's it's instantly kind of funny. But also you're like, well, I've got to know how

that happened. I gotta know what happened to this porkpine it was you know, never explained one of the That's the other thing about the newspapers may never follow it up. I don't know it's news when the porcupine does something wrong, but what about when they are the porcupines exonerate? Doesn't make the headlines at all. Porcupine exonerate, Well, that would be a good headline, but anyway walks away list a

normal life. Yeah, that's not a story. So hey, if you have anything to share with us, if you have thoughts about Dyson spheres or want to point out any of the numerous examples of Dyson spheres and other cosmic megastructures from science fiction, let us know. We would love to read us some listener mail about that on the podcast, and you can find us, by the way, on Facebook

and Twitter. We have accounts on both of those. We are blow the Mind, look us up, like us, follow us all that and that you will be rewarded with links to all sorts of cool stuff, and don't forget to email us at Below the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.