this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
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This feels like trying to determine FTL travel is possible by looking for warp signatures. We don't yet know megastructures are feasable.
Agree this sounds ridiculous, but isnβt this the basic point of science? Propose something is possible, then make predictions and see if you can prove or disprove. The Dyson Sphere idea itself is ridiculous, but to the extent you can detect large scale technology around a star, that would be fantastic. Even better, this is simply a query on existing data. Imagine if they detected intelligent life this way!
Kind of reminds me of the search for Dark Matter. That whole idea sounds so preposterous yet is the best fit for our current knowledge. But we can make predictions based on this. What could all this matter be to fit the theory while remaining undetected so far? Then you can build particle detectors to find them and particle accelerators to explore conditions for causing them. Eventually we should be able to either detect that matter or to rule out enough possibilities for another theory to better fit our knowledge
We don't really know that building a long-term colony on the Moon or Mars is feasible. We assume that it is because there's no obvious reason that it isn't possible other than it being difficult, but that's just a matter of working up to the necessary technology level.
There's nothing inherently problematic in the idea, it's just very big and ambitious. Equally we have no reason to believe that mega structures are not possible, you throw enough resources and science at the problem. FTL on the other hand has real physical restrictions against its existence, we have no reason to believe those restrictions can be overcome.
Dyson spheres are just very very big, no new crazy negative energy, subspace conduits required, just brute force engineering.
True! Long-term travel within the heliosphere is still thwarted due to the radiation of CMEs which require 350cm of concrete for protection. (Our manned trips to the moon were timed during solar minimum, and still had some worrying moments). While a moon base would could be accomplished by putting it underground (or having shelters underground at minimum) it still keeps us from getting to Mars.
Then there's the matter of creating a self-sustained ecology. All of our efforts so far have either died off or required infusions of elements to perpetrate. Also only a matter of time before we work out a configurable system.
But both of these are something like nuclear fusion, in that we know it can actually be done because we have natural examples (even if self-sustaining nuclear fusion only exists in the core of a star, we're pretty sure it happens IRL). We don't have signs of FTL or megastructures that don't collapse into a giant ball of mass. To qualify for a megastructure, we'd simply have to create something that is millions of meters. Our current freestanding structures measure in the hundreds of meters, and we have at most a few kilostructures like the LHC (27KM) which depends a lot on its fixture to the earth.
So yeah, it's a matter of developing the technology, but I suspect there are a lot fewer decades and great filters between when we figure out surviving CMEs in space versus building megastructures in space that don't collapse.
just build me a freaking elevator already
The next step is a launch loop, and even that will require materials with extreme tensile strength that we do not yet have.
Rotating momentum transfer tethers (skyhooks) might be just within the capabilities of our current materials.
I know there's an methodical thought process behind those things, but mhh... this feels more fiction than science to me.
I'm fine with research, but I'm worried some might use it as a slippery slope into pseudo science.
I don't think there's any real risk of that. The media often like to overhype scientific inquiries but all they're doing is looking at existing data