You may be aware of this planet’s growing energy crisis, as the requirement for a source of sustainable energy becomes ever more urgent. Unfortunately, even if we did manage to supply this current demand, for example through the use of a suitable renewable energy infrastructure, there is still a problem: Our energy demand is predicted to skyrocket as humanity progresses, as it has throughout history. There will therefore come a time when we have maximised the efficiency of our earthly power systems, having utilised all of the available energy on our home planet, but still need more energy.
The answer to this problem? A Dyson Sphere.
What is a Dyson Sphere?
How it would work: a Dyson Swarm.
How would we make one?
What is a Dyson Sphere?
A Dyson Sphere is a megastructure which completely envelopes a star, capturing a huge amount of its power output. We could, one day, build one around our very own sun, and we have physicist Freeman Dyson to thank for the concept.
Although Dyson spheres are very much hypothetical, it’s understandable that someday we might need such a powerful source of energy. As humanity has advanced, we have created ever more power hungry devices and technologies, developing increasingly effective energy sources to supply them - think about how we have progressed from using fire, to utilising nuclear fission reactors. In the far future, we will presumably control technologies so sophisticated we can scarcely imagine them (for example a stellar engine), which will likely require colossal amounts of energy to function. To supply this gigantic energy demand, we could turn to the largest source of energy in our solar system: Our sun.
The sun is quite possibly the ultimate source of energy we could ever harness - a ball of plasma 100 quintillion times more powerful than our most efficient nuclear reactor. So, how would a Dyson sphere capture this energy?
How it would work: a Dyson Swarm
A traditional Dyson Sphere is a huge, hollow sphere completely encapsulating a star, transferring the light energy released by the star into another form such as electrical energy, perhaps through the use of solar panels. There’s a problem though: a full sphere around our sun just wouldn’t work.
You see, the tensile strength required to keep such an enormous structure from tearing itself apart exceeds that of any known material. Secondly, any impacts (such as those from asteroid collisions), could alter the gravitational stability of the sphere by causing the collision site to be pushed closer to the star, potentially causing the whole sphere to collapse into the star itself. On a more practical note, there is simply not enough material in the whole solar system to build such a structure.
A Dyson Sphere like this is unfeasible
So how can we realise our dreams of exploiting our sun to the fullest extent?
Enter the Dyson Swarm.
A Dyson Swarm consists of numerous independent panels in an array of orbits around a star, like a swarm of bees around their hive.
The panels would need to transfer the light energy released by the sun into another useful form such as electricity. Though solar panels may seem like a great idea here, due to their short lifespan and intricate nature, they are not ideal for a system which should require minimal maintenance, and be able to be produced and transported to the star rapidly. A more viable design would use mirrors, with each panel consisting of little more than a reflective coating atop a thin backing. These panels would be easy to make and transport, and have a long lifespan with little maintenance required, making them perfect for this project.
A 3D rendering of a Dyson Swarm
The mirrors orbiting the sun would reflect and focus the vast majority of the emitted light, directing it to a specific point so that it can be used in a similar manner to concentrated solar power systems on earth: A fluid is heated by the focused light so that it becomes a gas, so that as it rises it spins a turbine with wire coils wrapped around the shaft, generating electricity as these are rapidly rotated in a strong magnetic field. The gas cools as it moves further from the heat source and condenses back into a liquid, so that it can be used again. It is just like a common coal plant, except the fluid is not heated by burning coal, but by the sun. Such generators would likely be large structures situated at a suitable distance from the sun, using fluids such as molten salts or water.
Now that we have a source of electrical energy, how would we transport it to earth or wherever we were living? Since building large wire networks across space is probably not the best idea, we would likely beam it to earth via wireless power transmission. In a similar manner to how your microwave oven produces microwaves to cook your food, the electrical energy is transferred to electromagnetic radiation in the form of microwaves, radio waves, or lasers, which are then directed to earth and captured via devices which convert them back into electricity - like modified solar panels which work with different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum rather than visible light.
Capturing even a small portion of the sun’s energy in this way would significantly increase our energy budget, ushering in a new age of scientific development, enabling us to terraform planets, power incredibly powerful technology, solve the energy crisis, and fulfil our wildest dreams.
How would we make one?
This sounds great, but there’s still the small problem of actually building the swarm. Doing so would require massive amounts of energy and material, but there is a solution: To gain the vast quantity of material required, we would have to disassemble an entire planet, with Mercury being ideal for this purpose due to its metal rich composition. Mercury is also comparatively close to the sun, meaning that there is a smaller distance over which the mirrors have to be transported, and has a weak surface gravity with no atmosphere, so that it is relatively easy to launch the panels into solar orbit.
“Sorry Mercury - it’s nothing personal”, Freeman Dyson
Image by the Nemu at pixabay
Disassembling the planet would require dedicated infrastructure, and the process would likely be mostly automated, given the harsh nature of Mercury. The infrastructure would consist of robotic miners, manufacturing stations, and launch equipment, along with solar energy systems. The solar energy systems, either containing solar panels or concentrated solar power structures, would provide the energy needed to construct and launch the first few panels - the rest would take care of themselves as described later on. Powered in this manner, the miners would strip mine Mercury, passing the materials to manufacturing stations which extract the desired elements - likely iron and oxygen which can be used to produce reflective haematite (iron oxide), building mirrors for the Dyson Swarm. The mirrors would then be shot into orbit by the launch equipment, probably using large electromagnetic railguns instead of costly rockets.
As I mentioned before though, the solar energy systems on Mercury would only need to provide power for the first few panels - after that, exponential growth would take care of energy requirements, as the mirrors already orbiting the sun would provide the energy needed to build and launch the next set of mirrors, and so on. In just a few decades, the whole project could be completed, providing humanity with what would seem to be a virtually limitless supply of energy.
To learn more about sustainable technologies, whether they are on a domestic scale, industry wide, or even global and beyond, you can check out other articles on this blog.
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