Wikipedia describes a Dyson sphere as "a hypotheticalmegastructure that completely encompasses a star and hence captures most or all of its power output. "
It was first described by Freeman Dyson.
Dyson speculated that such structures would be the logical consequence of the long-term survival and escalating energy needs of a technological civilization, and proposed that searching for evidence of the existence of such structures might lead to the detection of advanced intelligent extraterrestrial life.
The link at technology review , describes a new class of Dyson sphere, one that is built around a white dwarf instead of a star in its youth, so to say. It argues that constructing a Dyson sphere around a white dwarf would require much less material and would also explain earth like gravity.
It sounds pretty good, except I don't understand who will construct such a sphere? I mean, the species that this theory requires to construct the sphere would perish as their star turns into the dwarf, wouldn't they?
So either the sphere is constructed before hand (then explain the size?) or the species create some technology to survive the transition of their star into a white dwarf, or, intelligent life forms create a Dyson Sphere on one of the already existing white dwarves.
I don't know how is this working out, this bizarre idea.
Anyone with any possible explanation?
The white dwarf with a dysonsphere around it would be a method of dealing with getting gravity on the outside of the shell. The civilization would find a white dwarf and build a dysonsphere around it. They would build the dysonsphere at a level of gravity they want and populate the outside.
ReplyDeleteWhite dwarves are very stable, once they are done sheading mass. So the dysonsphere would last a long time.