We Are Ignoring A Solution To Possibly Everything
There is basically an infinite amount of energy that is being shot right at us in this moment, and we decide to ignore it because us humans are just too cool for the sun. (about 274 times cooler to be exact 😉)
If we were able to capture only 1.5% of the sun’s energy output that reaches the earth in one day, we could power the whole world for 2 years. Crazy? I thought so too!
1.5% is cute, but we are too busy for that insignificant amount. Right? Lets up that by a tiny amount. Hmmmmm… lets see… 10 sounds like a nice number. Not too high, not too low.
10%. Don’t be mistaken, not 10% of the energy that reaches the earth. 10% of the energy that the sun outputs. Every. Single. Second.
The sun radiates 3.846 septillion watts. That’s 25 digits! If we were to be able to take a tenth of that, that would still be 24 digits. The tiny moist piece of dust we are living on used a mere 22.3 trillion watts in 2015. If we do some division we find that by harnessing 10% of the suns energy output we can take in about 5 septillion times more energy than the world uses.
This sounds amazing, but if we actually understood how big that number was, our mind would be blown
How do we do this?
The most common thought out way to gather this energy is using a “Dyson Sphere” or a “Dyson Swarm”
They are actually both really similar things. A Dyson sphere is literally building a ball-like shell around the sun in order to capture almost all of it’s sunlight.
A Dyson Swarm has the same objective of capturing sunlight except instead of a shell around the sun, we make a bunch of solar panels orbit it… Kinda like that time you “accidentally” whacked a beehive with your baseball bat. You are the sun, the bees are the Dyson Swarm. Hopefully you wont do it the next time.
Disclaimer: These mega-structures might be able to capture most of the energy, but that does not mean they will be able to convert it well. That is a whole other problem in technology called efficiency.
A Sphere vs A Swarm
Similar objectives. Similar Idea. Lets look at their advantages against each other.
- Energy Capture: A Dyson Sphere easily wins this one. It surrounds the whole star as a shell, capturing almost all of the energy. The swarm lets a whole bunch of light/radiation through ☀️.
- Cost: A Dyson Swarm is so much more cost-effective 💸. You do not have to surround the whole sun, it could be made of independent satellites orbiting the star. There does not have to be any coordination, or massive building projects that stretch thousands of miles far.
- Planet Life: Dyson Swarm wins again. With the Dyson Swarm letting a bunch of sunlight through, we wont be able to see much difference all the way from earth; we are too distant, the sun is too bright. It will feel like nothing has changed except for the fact that we have an absurd amount of energy. With a Dyson Sphere, we wouldn’t be able to see the sun anymore. All plants would die 🌴. Oceans would freeze 🌊. The earth would be dark😞 We would probably have to move inside the Sphere.
- Reliability: You see, Dyson Spheres have an amount of problems that are super difficult to fix. How are we going to build a shell that doesn't melt? What if an asteroid hits it? How would we deal with the problem of the Dyson Sphere Breaking apart and falling in the sun? Swarms are much, much easier for this. If a single structure malfunctioned, the rest wouldn’t really care because they are independent. Dyson Spheres are like the 13 colonies before the revolution. A Dyson Swarm is America after 1776.
Both of these projects are extremely futuristic, but the Dyson Swarm seems to be in closer reach. Plain and simple, it has less problems.
Advantages
With Dyson Spheres/Swarms we solve the problem of energy. We will have an abundance of it, but most importantly it will be clean.
We will save land on earth. No need for solar panels covering up thousands of acres. Time to say bye to ugly nuclear reactors that can get unstable!
With an abundance of energy we can get into projects that seem impossible today. For example this AI called GPT-3 costs 10 million dollars to train, and GPT-4 is estimated to take billions of dollars. With cheaper energy (because we have so much of it) we can remove this obstacle and let AI advance faster. This is only one example among-st millions.
Our Current Situation
The earth is dying regardless of how much you decide to argue that the governments of the world are lying to us. We are polluting the air, water and land that we live in, and right now it unfortunately doesn't look like we give a damn.
A Dyson Swarm/Sphere is way ahead of our day, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start taking steps towards it. This could be investing in renewable energy sources. We can give the industry motivation to make wireless energy transfer better, clean energy cheaper etc.
By acquiring a structure like this we can not only make our home planet perfect, the whole solar system can be turned into our home.
“Big things start small” — Jeff Bezos
Action Items:
If you are interested in Dyson Spheres/Swarms, I would definitely recommend you watch this video by Kurzgesagt. Text simply cannot beat animations like these ones:
Think! Come up with ideas on your own! Is there a more effective method than a Dyson Structure? If we solve the problem of getting the energy, how do we effectively transport all that energy to earth? Questions await for your brain to ponder on!
