THE DYSON SPHERE
The human civilization’s growth is bounded by its technological advancement and its capability to harness the energy we needed for it. The concept of free energy revolutionizes every field to search for it and we found few ways to harness it. Of all the Renewable or free energy the most outstanding and un-dying source of energy is Solar energy. At the present, we are harnessing only a tiny fraction of sun energy which is striking on the Earth. This tiny fractional energy helps us to run major industries around the world and even the satellites orbiting in the space. Imagine, what if we can harness all the energy emitted from the sun continuously?
That idea was made from the concept of “Dyson Sphere”
In 1960, a two paged paper was published in the in the journal Science, titled “Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation”
This paper was published by Physicist and astronomer Freeman J. Dyson. He first explored this idea as a thought experiment in 1960.
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| Freeman Dyson in 2005 |
He imagined a star sized solar powered collection system. A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical mega structure that completely encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output. It is not only acted as a power source but also as a technology that other advanced civilization in our galaxy would use. We can use this as a search for our extra terrestrials. Dyson proposed that searching for evidence of the existence of such structures might lead to the discovery of advanced civilizations elsewhere in the galaxy. This concept of a civilization uses the sun as an energy source can be found in “Kardashev scale”
This structure is also called as Dyson shell or mega-structure. In recent years, astronomers explored that possibility of dyson sphere with a bizarre star, known to astronomers as KIC 8462852 also called as Tabby’s Star for its discoverer Tabetha Boyajian. This star’s strange light was originally thought to indicate a possible Dyson sphere. That idea has been discarded, but, in 2018, other possibilities emerged, such as that of using the Gaia mission to search for Dyson spheres. Dyson didn’t think of it as a solid sphere that would cover all of the sun, He wrote “A solid shell or ring surrounding a star is mechanically impossible. The form of ‘biosphere’ which I envisaged consists of a loose collection or swarm of objects traveling on independent orbits around the star.”
There are many different variants in Dyson sphere. But the three most common structures are:
- Dyson swarm
A Dyson ring, the simplest form of the Dyson swarm in scale. Orbit is 1 AU in radius, collectors are 1.0×107 km in diameter (10 Gm or ≈25 times the Earth–Moon distance), spaced 3 degrees from center to center around the orbital circle.
A relatively simple arrangement of multiple Dyson rings of the type pictured above, to form a more complex Dyson swarm. Rings' orbital radii are spaced 1.5×107 km with regard to one another, but average orbital radius is still 1 AU. Rings are rotated 15 degrees relative to one another, around a common axis of rotation.
- Dyson bubble
A Dyson bubble: an arrangement of statite around a star, in a non-orbital pattern. As long as a satellite has an unobstructed line-of-sight to its star, it can hover at any point in space near its star. This relatively simple arrangement is only one of an infinite number of possible statite configurations, and is meant as a contrast for a Dyson swarm only. Statites are pictured as the same size as the collectors pictured above, and arranged at a uniform 1 AU distance from the star.
- Dyson shell
A cut-away diagram of an idealized Dyson shell, a variant on Dyson's original concept, with a radius of 1 AU
In 2018, scientists began speaking of using the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission to seek Dyson spheres. Dyson had paved a new idea to seek out intelligent life’s existence and also a way in which our future civilization could use.
This article is contributed by Johith Gandhi
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