Every Star is Ours to Benefit From Proponents of solar power know that only a tiny fraction of the sun’s total energy strikes the Earth. What if we, as a civilization, could collect all of the sun’s energy? If so, we would use some form of Dyson sphere, sometimes referred to as a Dyson shell or megastructure. Physicist and astronomer Freeman J. Dyson first explored this idea as a thought experiment in 1960. Dyson’s two-page paper in the journal Science was titled Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation because he was imagining a solar-system-sized solar power collection system not as a power source for us earthlings, but as a technology that other advanced civilizations in our galaxy would, inevitably, use. Dyson proposed that searching for evidence of the existence of such structures might lead to the discovery of advanced civilizations elsewhere in the galaxy, and indeed, since late 2015, astronomers have been arguing about a bizarre and now-controversial star, known to astronomers as KIC 8462852, whose light may indicate telltale signs of a Dyson sphere under construction around it.
So what are these odd megastructures, these Dyson spheres? Originally, some envisioned a Dyson sphere as an artificial hollow sphere of matter around a star, and Dyson did originally use the word shell. But Dyson didn’t picture the energy-collectors in a solid shell. In an exchange of letters in Science with other scientists, following his 1960 Science article, Dyson 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.
Bottom line: A Dyson sphere would consist of orbiting solar collectors in the space around the star of an advanced civilization. The goal would be to ensure a significant fraction of the star’s energy hit a receiving surface where it could be used to the civilization’s benefit. Freeman J. Dyson, who in 1960 became the first scientist to explore this concept, suggested that this method of energy collection be inevitable for advanced civilizations.
Huh, a space elevator thread. Have not seen one of these in a while. I wonder if it will last?
Daniel Kelly
So how do we realize such a grandiose vision? In a 2012 lecture, Armstrong provided a highly abstract outline. First off, the entire building process would be carried out by automated, self-replicating robots. An army of these mechanical workers would be sent to Mercury to mine it for raw materials. He estimated that roughly half of the planet would be usable. Over roughly fifty years, the robots would multiply and build up the swarm of panels and satellites, until all of Mercury's raw materials are extinguished.
True, the depleted planet would be a husk of its former self, but would we really miss it? Armstrong even titled one of his presentation slides, "Sorry, Mercury, it's nothing personal…"
If you're skeptical of this plan, good, you should be. We're nowhere near actually accomplishing it, but it is fun to think about.
However, Armstrong does present a coherent argument constructing a Dyson swarm is entirely plausible. He reasons that if something is possible in nature, there's no reason why humans couldn't also do it eventually. He specifically mentioned artificial intelligence and replicating cells. With these two foundational tools in hand, all that's needed is automation and advanced 3D printing, which we're already getting good at. "Hence, scale is not in itself an insurmountable barrier," he said.
"Disassembling a planet is basically disassembling an asteroid, excepting doing it again, and again, and again," he added.
Whatever we do, we better get on it. Space junk is getting pretty thick.
Logan Anderson
Is this the actual space elevator? W-where have you been?
Also my question for everyone is - what is the deal with cucks? I mean literal cuckolds: "people" who get off knowing that their wives/girlfriends are fucking someone else; add bonus points if it involves a racial aspect. I've heard the theories of it being about having an extreme self-loathing, and then the theories of it being about feeling so in control that this is a way to feel out of control for a time. Still though, it seems more of a simple case of mental illness to me, devolution even. Yes, I know I'm sort of preaching to the choir here but I just wonder if anyone has some hand infographics or something with actual scientific data about this that isn't simply just memes and whatnot.
Michael Allen
Evidence shows that our resident microbes orchestrate the adaptive immune system, influence the brain, and contribute more gene functions than our own genome. The realization that humans are not individual, discrete entities but rather the outcome of ever-changing interactions with microorganisms has consequences beyond the biological disciplines. In particular, it calls into question the assumption that distinctive human traits set us apart from all other animals––and therefore also the traditional disciplinary divisions between the arts and the sciences.
Arguably, the findings of microbiome research profoundly trouble the comprehension of the human that has sustained the traditional distinction between the natural sciences (concerned with the nonhuman) and the arts (concerned with the human as more than mere nature). Provocatively put, if humans depend on microorganisms, then what is at stake in the study of microbes qua microbes is not only an understanding of microorganisms but also the human. This doesn’t mean that the field of the arts can now be conveniently ploughed in terms of the natural sciences. On the contrary, it means that the stakes of the natural sciences exceed the expertise of the natural sciences and reach over into the arts. This makes a close collaboration of the life sciences with the human sciences imperative.
As we see it, it is important but not enough to argue that “we have never been individuals” [3]––or to suggest that human and microbial worlds are inseparably “entangled” [30–32]. What is needed, in addition, is a whole new configuration of research, one where arts and science are combined. The challenge is 2-fold. Researchers in the life sciences have to learn that the stakes of their research are bigger than their expertise, and researchers in the arts have to learn to think the human––philosophy, politics, and poetry––beyond the now untenable idea that humans are more than mere nature. The challenge is big, the opportunity even bigger: it is time, and perhaps past time, to rethink collaboratively––beyond arts and science divisions––what it means to be a living human being at home in a microbial world, one on which we depend and with which we are inseparably interwoven. Microbiome science has the exciting––the important––potential to catalyze the breakdown of the anachronistic barriers between the natural and the human sciences and enable a truly integrated understanding of what it means to be human, after the illusion of the bounded, individual self. The human is more than the human. archive.is/MrHoI
His speech is all fucked, but this guy is pretty interesting.
Ayden Jenkins
It is also clear that historical migrations into Ireland have left a greater genomic footprint than previously anticipated; our consideration of autosomal data escapes the constraints of patrilineal genetics and has allowed us to detect a much greater Viking influence than previously estimated with Y chromosome data. Although the genetic imprint of the British Plantations is much harder to delineate, the inter-island exchange and clustering observed between present-day individuals from Northern Ireland and Scotland signals the enduring impact of these historical movements of people. archive.is/yX268
We consider the problem of constructing abstract representations for planning in high-dimensional, continuous environments. We assume an agent equipped with a collection of high-level actions, and construct representations provably capable of evaluating plans composed of sequences of those actions. Finally, we apply these techniques to create a physical robot system that autonomously learns its own symbolic representation of a mobile manipulation task directly from sensorimotor data—point clouds, map locations, and joint angles—and then plans using that representation. Together, these results establish a principled link between high-level actions and abstract representations, a concrete theoretical foundation for constructing abstract representations with provable properties, and a practical mechanism for autonomously learning abstract high-level representations. archive.is/iGUkV
I've seen a handful of videos from NASA that are somewhat suspicious. Not drawing any conclusions, but if any of the videos are fake I'm wondering why. What's the benefit?
