Dyson Spheres as Technosignatures to Look for in Astronomy's Search for Technologically-Industrially Advanced Extraterrestrial Intelligence (ETI) Societies May Be Futile and a Rarity for Potentially Advanced ETIs
I had a thought the evening of 01-28-2021 that was a misgivings
reaction to an essay I read on the continuing search of outer space by space
scientists for technosignatures related to exoplanets of other star-planetary
systems of potentially technologically, industrially advanced ETI species, in which
solar-energy-capture Dyson spheres surrounding stars were posited as such a
technosignatue (evidence or indicators of advanced industrialization,
engineering or technology) of a technologically advanced civilization or society.
I thought that more easily, economically and realistically accessible and
achievable than technologically advanced ETIs constructing Dyson spheres around
stars, for solar systems analogous to ours and with a star like ours (of the
same star class and approximate size and mass), instead endlessly inexhaustible
electricity could be generated, captured, stored and distributed
interplanetarily (including to all solar system moons) from the endlessly
renewable, boundless and powerful wind energy of the giant gaseous and wind
planets Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus via specially-designed exoplanet aerial,
orbital wind-turbines (satellites, that could alternatively be routinely or passively continuously self-fueled, if and as needed either way, by the atmospherically omnipresent hydrocarbon fossil fuels of these planets flowing through open-ended fueling funnels for their engines), permanently orbiting systems, as replaceable fleets, of these giant
gaseous, wind planets that also naturally generate endlessly renewable, extreme
voltage, electricity, from their constant extreme lightning storms, that could
as well be harnessed by specially designed lightning-storm-specialized
electrical-energy capture, storage and distribution technology (natural, celestial
fuel-energy production machines or factories ready for harnessing by technologically
advanced complex organisms and their artificial, machine intelligence) These electrical energies perhaps could be exported as concentrated electricity beams or streaming columns, etc., to human-tech made electrical fields, or such grids, surrounding human-settlement off-Earth colonied planets and moons (Saturn has our solar system's only known planetary electrical field surrounding it, which could be used as a model for humanity to copy for constructing its own version of the same for its off-Earth planet and moon colonies to receive electricity infusions from these gas-wind planet electrical-energy generating systems). In any event, for maximized energy security and access-use reliability on off-Earth worlds they would provide energy in parallel with general-purpose electricity generation from nuclear-ore, mined from the
rocky planet-celestial body belt, via futuristic nuclear-waste free and clean,
failsafe nuclear power plants. Moreover, likewise nuclear reactors could be
built to be artificial heating cores to warm and geothermally terraform
terrestrially cold, geophysically and biologically largely inactive planets and
moons as well as to be orbiting artificial heat- and light-producing sun-moons
for such planets and moons to be settled. Short-term experimental sun-moons (called
artificial suns) have recently been made separately by each the People's
Republic of China (https://www.seeker.com/star-in-a-jar-fusion-reactor-works-and-promises-infinite-energy-2134228965.html) and South
Korea (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/watch/south-koreas-artificial-sun-just-broke-a-world-record-in-nuclear-fusion/vp-BB1cjFPD),
a concept I wrote on in a blog some years back and one that was also pioneered
in Germany on a mini-scale, in an experiment named "A Star in a Jar" (https://www.seeker.com/star-in-a-jar-fusion-reactor-works-and-promises-infinite-energy-2134228965.html). As regards the latter, does it suggest that humanity's astrophysics engineering can create micro and miniature controllable neutron stars, magnetars and black holes to also serve technologically, industrially advancing humanity's growing and more demanding fuel-energy and vehicle-propulsion as well as unrecyclable waste-disposal needs, if our species does not precipitate its own extinction first from the path to its self-extinction it is on presently? In the least, these neophyte star techs of humanity are the foundations and frontier of
human sci-technocracy’s grand star-tech engineering to come, which may already exist as a high art and
sci-tech practice of cognitively and technologically, industrially highly advanced ETs. For
the rocky planetary-celestial object belt in the solar-system region nearest to
the sun, in addition to ground-based wind turbines, in-situ, on-site solar
capture, storage and distribution technology would suffice or supplement energy
supplies generated from futuristic nuclear-waste free and clean, failsafe
nuclear power plants and imported from the gaseous, wind giant planets, but
would need to be enhanced for the cold, dimmer planets, moons and asteroids of this
rocky region.
However, technologically, industrially highly advanced ETIs might be able to manage the power of their star and perpetuate the life of their star indefinitely beyond its natural life span by obtaining for it, as in periodically mobilizing or shepherding into their solar system, and feeding it star-forming nebulae via their technology for doing this, among other star-life perpetuation and power-level calibrating strategies for their star. Nebulae might come from interstellar space beyond the solar system's heliosphere or possibly from the equivalent of suitably select Kuiper-belt primordial solar-disk celestial objects composed of ice, outer-space debris and gas that when moved to the inner solar system could liquify and outgas to nebulae or other mixed-matter clouds in that main planetary sector of the solar system. (Other select latter objects may also somehow be preserved as such objects to be deposited in craters or valleys of the solar system's planets and moons of their colonization to stock them with water as needed or on a regular supply schedule, appropriate for each world.) And, if need be, they could remove plasma or other developments or structures from their star to avert its capture by a black hole or another star, or its transformation into a different star phase, or for whatever purpose, like their siphoning induced plasma ejecta from a plasma-donor star for their relevant technology to fuel their home star or a colony-donee-recipient star. If the light-travel distance signature and light-spectra indicated age of the star type radio-telescopically observed indicate that the star is way too old for its type with its parameters to have naturally survived in its given stellar state to that point in time and to have produced those two signatures, then speculatively there is a rational chance and it is an academically admissible hypothesis that those stellar-cosmic signatures are signs of ETI star-tech engineering, or doctoring, a kind of ETI-star longevity symbiosis. (Our astronomy very well may have spotted and reported on celestial anomalies that could be signs of star-tech and analyzed them, hopefully not ideologically, to be something falling into the intellectual filter for screening for the familiar, often societal or institutional conventional or orthodox thinking and explanations formally termed confirmation bias. By the way, now renowned intellectuals Giordano Bruno and Galilei Galileo were victims of this kind of thinking in their lifetimes in the 1600s CE. There was much pubic skepticism that there were extrasolar planets until the first discovery of extrasolar planets in 1992 and still much public skepticism that extrasolar planets were common or typical until circa the second decade of the 21st century, skepticism that has largely shed given their routine discovery with major improvements in radio and optical astronomy, that are very far from optimal.)
Giant light-and-heat magnifier, mirror-magnifying-glass-like deflector-system Dyson spheres encircling stars could be useful in cold, dim solar systems for the purpose of warming and lighting them up enough to create the environmental conditions in them that would make them habitable somewheres therein for biology of some kind as we know it to crop up and live. Also, Dyson spheres of a different deflector kind might be useful for encircling black holes for harnessing exotic energy, possibly dark energy and/or matter, from them.
Intriguing Stars and an Intriguing Black Hole
(Mouse click on the hyperlinks below to see and read:)
https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/the-ever-more-puzzling-and-intriguing-tabbys-star/ -- Tabby Star
http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/balls-plasma-binary-star-system-04259.html#:~:text=Astronomers%20using%20the%20NASA%2FESA%20Hubble%20Space%20Telescope%20have,V%20Hydrae.%20This%20image%20shows%20V%20Hydrae%20%28center%29. A cyclically plasma-belching binary star system
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6973527/Astronomers-spot-black-hole-ejecting-plasma-spinning-fast-drags-spacetime.html -- a cyclically plasma-belching black hole
https://www.space.com/20112-oldest-known-star-universe.html -- The Methuselah Star
