In the February issue of the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, one scientist laid out a way that far-out Dyson spheres and Dyson rings could hypothetically exist in real life. These cosmological superstructures have always acted as a symbol or metaphor of sorts, representing a galaxy-level civilization’s next step into the broader environs—they need so much energy that they must harness an entire star to power their artificial intelligence (AI) and general computation. By this point, theorists suggest, they might all even be pure consciousnesses that are uploaded to the cloud.
If that sounds far out, you’re right. But in the new paper, engineer and solar sail scholar Colin McInnes, from the University of Glasgow in Scotland, writes about some of the key ways these superstructures could be brought into the realm of possibility. The secret is in the particular combination of celestial bodies enclosed by a Dyson sphere or ring, because the addition of other sources of local gravity can stabilize it.
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