How Advanced Alien Civilizations Would Conquer the Galaxy - Fermi paradox -

How Advanced Alien Civilizations Would Conquer the Galaxy

Ancient extraterrestrial civilizations, millions of years older than humanity, would need enormous amounts of energy. By creating a swarm of satellites in a spherical shell, they could harness much of the power of their star.

Science fiction author Olaf Stapledon described spherical, energy-trapping alien structures in his 1937 novel "Star Maker":

"Not only was every solar system now surrounded by a gauze of light traps, which focused the escaping solar energy for intelligent use, so that the whole galaxy was dimmed, but many stars that were not suited to be suns were disintegrated, and rifled of their prodigious stores of sub-atomic energy."

Th Concept of Dyson Spheres is nothing new to many of us. I read this earlier and honestly didn't think anything new was presented, then it dawned on me, Since many well known scientists/theoretical physicists and respected mathematicians openly discuss the concept of Dyson Spheres. Are there ANY present programs/probes actively searching for either these spheres outright or for sings of the existence?

Seems that if this is a viable possibility how would they know if they are looking at one or something that is assumed to be a Rocky Giant? How would one even look? IF an Alien Civ has completely surrounded their Star or solar System would that even be possible to spot with our present level of Tech?


To be honest the first time I heard of these Spheres was in a Star Trek episode. It fascinated me. For the less than familiar with the concept.

I'd like to leave you with the following video.

The Fermi Paradox...

Talk by Stuart Armstrong, at the Oxford physics department

Abstract: The Fermi paradox is the contrast between the high estimate of the likelihood of extraterritorial civilizations, and the lack of visible evidence of them. But what sort of evidence should we expect to see? This is what exploratory engineering can tell us, giving us estimates of what kind of cosmic structures are plausibly constructable by advanced civilizations, and what traces they would leave. Based on our current knowledge, it seems that it would be easy for such a civilization to rapidly occupy vast swathes of the universe in a visible fashion. There are game-theoretic reasons to suppose that they would do so. This leads to a worsening of the Fermi paradox, reducing the likelihood of "advanced but unseen" civilizations, even in other galaxies.

Pretty dam advanced. That's if they didn't blow themselves, or piss off one the neighbors. Not only that, a civilization that huge enough to span its armies across the galaxy would be well known. And would be a huge target on all fronts.

Like the Empire from Star Wars.

Also, it would require a huge population(They'd breed like Jack rabbits), resources, as well man( humanoid power). Let alone any drone/A.I systems.

reply to post by SLAYER69


I think if they were going to destroy earth, they would just blow up the moon (yes I did watch oblivion last night and yes I thought it was a good movie).

But it makes sense, tidal waves would go haywire, weather would destroy more of us without the Aliens seeing any form of fighting. Then when Earth is crippled, BAM! Make some clones of humans and pretend that the surviving humans are aliens that the clones need to kill for the protection of humanity whilst you suck up the oceans!... Man that movie had a lot of plot holes.. It was pretty cool though, I mean Morgan Freeman in Steam Punk googles, what's not to like?

Oh yeah, Spoiler alert lol

reply to post by SLAYER69

Are there ANY present programs/probes actively searching for either these spheres?

arxiv.org...

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical construct of a star purposely shrouded by a cloak of broken-up planetary material to better utilize all of the stellar energy. A clean Dyson sphere identification would give a significant signature for intelligence at work. A search for Dyson spheres has been carried out using the 250,000 source database of the IRAS infrared satellite which covered 96% of the sky. The search has used the Calgary database for the IRAS Low Resolution Spectrometer (LRS) to look for fits to blackbody spectra. Searches have been conducted for both pure (fully cloaked) and partial Dyson spheres in the blackbody temperature region 100 K

reply to post by SLAYER69


Fun topic.
S+F!

Here's another thread about the search for Dyson Spheres by member JadeStar posted recently:
Seeking Silent Aliens ...

Some excellent discussion there illustrating and discussing how complete enclosure of a solar body is unlikely among other things.

Could it be possible for Dyson spheres to appear like black holes, albeit small ones?

Nothing in the middle, light blocked gravitational lensing, are we sure black holes ARE even black holes at all and just dyson spheres?

I just saw that episode. Am I the only one who was more bothered by them transporting through the shields than by the idea of Scotty being resurrected or of the most sophisticated technology in the sector having a broken exit door sensor like a K-mart in a bad neighborhood? (/trekkie nonsense)

On a potentially more realistic note though, Dyson Spheres aren't even the hardest to detect explanation of the Fermi Paradox.

When one planet is no longer enough for a civilization, perhaps instead of growing their territory they shrink themselves into a computer simulation. If you could compute consciousness and reality perfectly, there is no real requirement that you go through the motions. We might find out that 99% of the life of the average civilization plays out in a shoebox drifting through empty space long after their star and their biology are gone.

The Vagabond
When one planet is no longer enough for a civilization, perhaps instead of growing their territory they shrink themselves into a computer simulation. If you could compute consciousness and reality perfectly, there is no real requirement that you go through the motions. We might find out that 99% of the life of the average civilization plays out in a shoebox drifting through empty space long after their star and their biology are gone.

OR

Simply reduce their essence down to a few basic strands of their DNA and send them off into the Galaxy in Frozen Snowballs...

reply to post by The Vagabond


Post-biology would likely indeed be a more efficient solution for any X civilization's energy demands, whether such involves virtual realities, synthetic replacement bodies, and/or even shrinky-dinking biology down the the smallest, most efficient retainer of species identity.

In cases where post-biology may be the case, we may profit in looking at places around the galaxy that should be expected to be "Cold" based on the the over-clock paradigm of increased electronic efficiency at colder temperatures, where such "cold" spots in the Universe would serve as excellent heat sinks where then we may find indications of waste heat where there shouldn't necessarily be any.

All in all, however, we're looking for ANY technological civilization and if there's more than just us, then there's likelihood for any unknown variety of civilizations.
Why be picky about who we find, so long as we find them ... especially before they find us (just in case).

reply to post by SLAYER69

Hell of a presentaion on interesting theory . If you would pardon a Layman ' s question : how do you know we do not reside insidesuch a construct now ?

S/F , thanks.

Great thread.

The main issue i see with dyson spheres would be where the hell would ANY civilisation acquire
the sheer quantity of raw material needed to construct one never mind keeping it
stable relative to the variable forces emanating from the star enclosed.

it would need to be not only staggeringly vast in scale it would also need to be
hugely strong to withstand gravity puling one way and variable in magnitude
and direction solar wind pushing out before you start with coronal mass ejections
and flares.

reply to post by SLAYER69


Why would an advanced civilisation waste ridiculous amounts of resources on such a poor source of energy when there is more energy easily and cheaply accessible from the vacuum.

The Casmir effect is real and as most of you would have seen on other posts. It has been reported to have been accessed within the military and with motionless electromagnetic generators by private researchers.

Even if the results of ZPE research so far had been exaggerated it appears to me obvious as source of energy of UFOs and therefore the civilisations behind them.

Dyson Speres what for —what crap, any species able to freely travel around even local systems would have ZPE

reply to post by ShayneJUK

The main issue i see with dyson spheres would be where the hell would ANY civilisation acquire the sheer quantity of raw material needed to construct one never mind keeping it stable relative to the variable forces emanating from the star enclosed.

The material comes from the planets of the system. Don't need them to live on anymore.
Holding it all together comes along with the rest of the tech required to construct the thing in the first place.

reply to post by SLAYER69


The idea of using Dyson spheres to utilise all available energy from a star predates quantum theory and idea's such as zero point quntum vacuum energy had not been even thought on let alone proposed, so while it is possible some race out there may have opted to do such it is at least as possible someone has tapped this chaos field and found a way of implementing a flow regulation on a quantum level like diode if you like that can allow them to utillise the energy in a given region, as you know a single square inch has many times the magnitude of essentially untappable energy as an entire star output's SO?.
Given this it becomes at least hypothetically feasable that many civilisation reach vast level's of development but never actually leave there star (At least mono dimensionally) but like sliders the sci fi show which is a little far fetched but cool anyway, maybe they instead learn how to utilise not the energy but a fuller potential of there home world's and there parrallel realitysm, imagine travelling to a pristine environment free of polution, maybe there entire populations would thus migrate to there own world but just another cleaner reality in a parrallel version of it where they never evolved, then again they may be more likely to meet a beligerant intelligent race (themselves) as they would be if they learned to use this to make artificial extra stella worlds powered by vacuum energy with parralel realitys acting to provide there potential difference and utilising the exchange to produce usable form's of energy, so you might never know they are there but the cold dark of deep extra stella space may be teeming with artificial extreme long duration civilisations in non star based dysom like world's and when all the stars are gone or are too far apart to be seen these could be the only societys still around.

Its a very nice idea but how much energy/time would have to be put to do something like this to harvest a star that at the end will die and render the structure useless.

If they were so advance to transform entire planets to structures so massive and complex, is there a reason for them for just not directly transform the planets into energy by some sort of fission process and just go from planet to planet as parasites?

At the end if they want to survive the life span of their star they would have to move the whole star to another system or abandon the mega structure, I think is one thing to build something around a star and another to move the star itself.

Just an ignorant thought.

I sincerely doubt ancient space-faring extraterrestrial civilizations would go through the trouble of enclosing a star for energy and would likely have found alternative sources of energy over the millions or billions of years they've existed.

Any civilization that has been around that long is likely far beyond our understanding of acquiring and using energy.

But why don't we see ET? I believe we do on a daily basis and its being covered up. I can't help it if some famous skeptical scientist uttered something once and everybody took it as the truth of the matter.

reply to post by Bazart


I think by now we'd have determined if we lived in one of these. But, speaking philosophically, We may be living in some type of construct that we haven't fully come to grips with just yet.

reply to post by HappyYogi


It would theoretically be the Second step *Type II* Next step hypothetically speaking after the Spheres would be Type III which would mean they would be able to not only control one or several star's energy but take full advantage of an entire Galaxy. Also, the Dyson sphere doesn't have to be a solid ball.

It could be a matrix/constellation of collecting and or focusing satellites that would gather the Lions share of the output of their sun.

reply to post by LABTECH767


I looked into that. The one thing that keeps coming up to initiate such endeavors is the huge amounts of POWER requirements, There would need to be enough to carry those out. Once they were able to establish them, then the power requirements may be obtained from it there after.

If I've understood you correctly?

Heck , they already have conquered the Earth. They live among us, as kings. The annunaki. They tried to kill humanity that they created with the great flood. The new ruler, is working in the sign of Aquarius, and if you noticed beginning of the millenia, we had sunami's. That's his way of telling us , whose in charge.