
George Dvorsky has advocated the use of self-replicating robots to overcome this limitation in the relatively near term. The number of craft required to obtain, transmit, and maintain a complete Dyson sphere exceeds present-day industrial capabilities. Feasibility Īlthough such megastructures are theoretically possible, building a stable Dyson sphere system is currently far beyond humanity's engineering capacity. He was inspired by the 1937 science fiction novel Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon, and possibly by the works of J. However, Dyson was not the first to advance this idea. His 1960 paper "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infra-Red Radiation", published in the journal Science, is credited with being the first to formalize the concept of the Dyson sphere. Dyson's proposal did not detail how such a system would be constructed, but focused only on issues of energy collection, on the basis that such a structure could be distinguished by its unusual emission spectrum in comparison to a star. He proposed a system of orbiting structures (which he referred to initially as a shell) designed to intercept and collect all energy produced by the Sun.

He reasoned that if human civilization expanded energy demands long enough, there would come a time when it demanded the total energy output of the Sun.

The concept of the Dyson sphere was the result of a thought experiment by physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson, when he theorized that all technological civilizations constantly increased their demand for energy. In May 2013, at the Starship Century Symposium in San Diego, Dyson repeated his comments that he wished the concept had not been named after him. Most fictional depictions describe a solid shell of matter enclosing a star, which was considered by Dyson himself the least plausible variant of the idea. These later proposals have not been limited to solar-power stations, with many involving habitation or industrial elements.
#METAL SWARM INFINITY SERIES#
Since then, other variant designs involving building an artificial structure or series of structures to encompass a star have been proposed in exploratory engineering or described in science fiction under the name "Dyson sphere". Different types of Dyson spheres and their energy-harvesting ability would correspond to levels of technological advancement on the Kardashev scale. He proposed that searching for such structures could lead to the detection of advanced, intelligent extraterrestrial life. Dyson speculated that such structures would be the logical consequence of the escalating energy needs of a technological civilization and would be a necessity for its long-term survival. The concept was later popularized by Freeman Dyson in his 1960 paper "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation". surrounded by a gauze of light-traps, which focused the escaping solar energy for intelligent use". The first contemporary description of the structure was by Olaf Stapledon in his science fiction novel Star Maker (1937), in which he described "every solar system. Because only a tiny fraction of a star's energy emissions reaches the surface of any orbiting planet, building structures encircling a star would enable a civilization to harvest far more energy.


The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to explain how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy requirements once those requirements exceed what can be generated from the home planet's resources alone. 3D rendering of a Dyson sphere utilizing large, orbiting panelsĪ Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its solar power output.
