Living on a planet has a lot of advantages,
Like strong gravity to keep us from flying off into space,
and the magnetic field and an atmosphere to protect us from damaging solar radiation.
But, what if an advanced civilization ran out of room to grow on their home planet?
What if they ran out of energy and resources to keep themselves going?
Well, their best bet might be to build settlements in space,
So they could capture more of their star's energy
Not another planet, though
I mean, just sort of, floating around out there
There's a whole field of science that deals with how that might work. It's called
And it's full of really cool, though still very hypothetical, ideas
One of the most famous astroengineering concepts is known as a Dyson Sphere
An object that captures more of the star's light, and converts it into useful energy
It's named after Freeman Dyson, an astrophysicist who published a paper on this concept back in 1960
He pointed out that only a tiny amount of the sun's light output hits Earth
Since the rest is emitted in other directions
And he proposed that other civilizations might have had to build some kind of structure to harness more energy from their local star
And could now be using so much energy, that we'd be able to detect their waste heat, from here, on Earth
But, he didn't go into detail about how that might work
Since then, astroengineers have been deveoping the concept
And, one of the more well-known possibilities, first showed up in the 1930's science fiction novel: Star Maker
And has been featured in lots of stories since then
What if they had a huge spherical shell, surrounding their sun, like some kind of cosmic egg?
If their home-star was similar to ours and they built it with a radius of one astronomical unit, or AU,
Which is the distance from the Earth to the Sun,
Then, every point in that sphere would get the same amount of radiation as here on the Earth
And, there's a bonus!
If they fixed up the surface of the shell with a nice atmosphere, and a comfortable habitat
It would also provide a much larger area to spread out into
But, of course there are lots of obvious limitations
Though, another solar system might have more to work with
But then the sphere, constantly being exposed to sunlight, would be too hot for life, electronics, and maybe even the structure itself
They, could try building a bigger one, so that the shell, would be farther from the sun and wouldn't get as hot,
But, then they'd need even more stuff to build it
Either way, they'd have some gravity problems
Standing on the outside of the sphere, they would only feel the tiny pull of their home star
And if they were on the inside of that shell, they'd feel the same pull and start floating toward their sun
You could try to get the sphere spinning to simulate gravity, but it would take a lot of energy
And you'd still only get an Earth-like gravitational pull near the equator
On top of everything else, on the inside of the sphere, the gravitiational attraction cancels out
So, it'd basically be free floating around their sun
Any minor nudge, like from an asteroid hit, would set the thing drifting and eventually, it would crash into the star
So, what if they built a swarm of smaller structures and spread them out around the sun,
Instead of one huge, rigid, shell?
That might be a little more doable
It's the same thing concept as the Dyson Sphere,
Because they're spreading out around the sun to gather more of its energy
It's just... not a sphere
For example, they could try using solar collectors, devices that capture the sun's energy
Balanced on solar sails, thin mirrors designed to be pushed around by the pressure of the sun's radiation
Then, they could stick them right where the inward pull of their sun's gravity would be just as strong as the outward push of its radiation
They'd be like space power plants, transferring the extra energy they collected to smaller, more self-contained space habitats
But, with all these hurdles, humans are no where near being able to build a Dyson Sphere or anything like it
But, we are looking for signs that other civilizations might have
That's why astronomers are scanning other galaxies for infared spikes
That seem like they shouldn't be there
So, these huge astroengineering projects might have to stay theoretical for now,
But trying to figure out how they might work, gives us new ideas about how to look for other life
That could be out there in the universe
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