Episode description

Robert G. Kennedy, Dr. Gregory L. Matloff, Les Johnson, Dr. Ben Davis and Phillip R. Cox are today's featured guests.

Topic: Building a Dyson Dot, which is a very small segment of a Dyson Sphere.  A Dyson Sphere is an object Freeman Dyson suggested we look for if we wish to discover alien civilizations in our galaxy. It is a spherical device which completely surrounds a star, and collects all the radiant energy from the star so the energy can be used by the civilization which built it.  Such objects would be large and glow brightly in the infrared. 

Sub-topics: Reasons we should build a Dyson Dot (it would solve for Global Climate Change and pay for itself by providing our civilization with more energy than we currently use); reasons we should not build a Dyson Dot (it may break space treaties and it's scary-big); and the engineering hurdles its construction would require us to overcome.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the March 13, 2013 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 55 minutes] This panel was recorded on July 21, 2012 in Chattanooga Tenn, at the science fiction and fantasy convention LibertyCon.

Robert G. Kennedy is an author, speaker, and engineer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Dr. Gregory L. Matloff is assistant professor of physics at New York City College of Technology. He has consulted for the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, is a Fellow of the British interplanetary Society, is a Hayden Associate at the American Museum of Natural History, and is a Corresponding Member of the International Academy of Astronautics.

Dr. Ben Davis earned his PhD in Nuclear Physics from the University of Notre Dame. For several years he then taught mathematics, programming, astronomy and physics. He now works in the biometrics industry.

Phillip R. Cox has been an engineer in the military-industrial complex for the last thirty years. His career has included the development of many fine spacecraft and weapons of mass destruction.