Sayonara

The thread looked as if it could not be split because Alan mentioned the problem with his balls after his last word on the "vastness of space" thread, and the automerge feature joined the posts together. Note to mods: the way to get around this is to select the merged posts and any child posts, and then choose "copy posts" from the post tools menu. Copy to a new thread in the appropriate forum. Then... In the new thread: remove any irrelevant parts from the first post, which was the merged post in the old thread. Copy URL to paste in the old thread. In the old thread: remove the irrelevant parts from the merged post, and delete the posts which were copied across to the new thread. Provide a link to the split thread if desired. Alternatively, you can copy the split post to a new thread, and just move across any child posts when it is created. This reduces database clutter. Don't forget to leave edit/delete reasons so other staff can see what went on.

"Minor" means that the adjustment is small compared to the diameter of the sphere. It's a matter of relative proportion. It might be a million-kilometre push in one direction, but that is still less than a 0.3% correction. This is disingenuous at best. Shell or swarm, both have their effective surface at the same distance from the sun as the Earth, so none are any more or less vulnerable. Habitats could not move out of the way of flares, because they would be hit before they had time to respond - this is, of course, assuming a particularly well-aimed flare with a destructive range of at least 1AU, and a completely defenceless habitat (). The advantage of the shell under disaster conditions is that it is a big enough boy to take a serious beating and still be habitable to a human population in the order of 3x1018. An H-bomb attack might do serious damage to a habitat, but not a sphere. The most powerful nuclear detonation ever triggered by man had a fireball radius of 4.6km, and I imagine a blast radius of about 50km beyond that. That is not even noticeable compared to the inner surface area of a shell, which would be about 600 million times that of the Earth's surface. There are some really good objections to the shell conjecture, but none of these are they. I personally find a swarm much more likely, for all sorts of reasons, but I have to say that the objections you have raised so far are the most trivial. Compressive strength of a point on the shell under an arbitrary number of domes of 1AU radius with the gravity of the sun is a good objection. So is gravitationally neutral inner surface. "I can't imagine the technology responsible for building such a structure ever doing it well" is not an objection. Let's just stick to swarms for type-II civs, it's easier, relevant, and we will agree more.

Rio de Janeiro!

If some users are too stupid or antisocial to realise why they are getting infraction points before it is too late, then the system is working wrt those users.

But we have to take into account that such a structure would not be designed and built with our current understanding of physics. I tend to agree. The solution, which is obvious to a monkey-brain so a Dyson-builder will probably also think of it, is to provide thrust at more than one point. In any case, since the sphere would be just as subject to the orbit of the galactic core as any other matter you wish to name, only minor adjustments should be necessary. I would imagine many, many, many such breakthroughs will occur between now and that far distant day when we dare even to contemplate what kind of materials we might best use to begin sketching the system that will allow us to design part of a Dyson structure. Magical physics is not a requirement for technical engineering feats. New physics is not going to be in short supply over the next 500,000,000 years. Fusion power might even be obsolete before your envisaged civilisation emerges! However, the biggest single objection to your deuterium-fuelled galaxy is that territorially expanding populations do not homogenise. They adapt and radiate. Quite possibly so. Sort of a romantic image, isn't it? Anyway, Dyson shells (solid spheres) and swarms are only relevant to the thread if we are discussing a Kardashev-II civilisation. The deuterium/fusion civilisation does not qualify anywhere on the Kardashev scale, so we are off-topic with that. Let's get ourselves back on track!

Actually I wasn't being sarcastic. I imagine it's different if you live in a Latin country, but from my point of view taking a break from work-work-work and coming to Brasil to chill with you guys was awesome.

To be fair to Lance, I believe that when he made that comment he was imagining a civilisation which in its entirety is approaching level II on the Kardashev scale. That is how a Dyson structure could be relevant to this discussion. What I don't get is why he thinks that while the enclosed star travels around the core along with all the rest of the matter in the galaxy, the Dyson shell is going to maintain an absolute position in space. But that has nothing to do with this thread, so meh.

The customers, not the staff.

Are we are pretty much agreed that: (a) if someone wants to kill themselves, they are not going to change their mind just because they do not have a handgun within reach, (b) having a handgun within reach does not make people intent on doing themselves in, and © handguns might well make for a more effective means of topping oneself, but this is beside the point. ?

It is not unknown for customer services types to tell customers complete lies, expecting them to be technically illiterate.

Well, you are saying one or the other of two things here. Either... 1) It's impossible to build a solid Dyson sphere because it cannot be moved to compensate for the star's motion, or 2) A civilisation which was sufficiently technologically advanced enough to build such a sphere will somehow have a blind spot to this engineering requirement, despite it being so obvious that our primitive monkey brains can quite easily see it, and would end up crashing into the sun. Since (2) is so ridiculous, I presume you mean to state (1). Is that right? I am not sure why you think that a solid sphere is "contrary to the laws of physics". The fact that something cannot sit in orbit does not require it to go against the laws of physics in order to exist, it just needs to be engineered such that it is capable of -- and these are your own words coming up -- changing its position dynamically. You have got the cart leading the horse on this one. If you like. I notice that you had absolutely nothing to say on my replies to your deuterium post. You know; the on-topic parts of my earlier reply.

It has to be something to do with the ISP then. Which ISP is it? If you have any friends on the same ISP, ask if they have the same problem. If they do not, get them to bring their laptop to your house and try using your connection.

For your average Windows XP installation, that is not right. Usually it is advertising its presence on a good few of them. Something is definitely blocking ports. Does your router have a hardware firewall, NAT, or anything like that?

Try using the Shields Up tools from GRC to check which of your ports are open.

What operating system are you using?

Your board probably supports dual-channel RAM, in which case you can have two or four slots in use, and they must each have equivalent sticks placed in them.

I think he was saying that I am comparing myself to god Or rather "we", seeing as it turns out I am not some kind of unique specimen.

Moved to Computer Help, welcome back.

Depends if the definition is strict enough to require that the entire energy absolute of the star is harnessed, or just the usable energy which the star emits. But "millions of years", in what we must imagine would be a civilisation which is expanding and become technologically, politically, and economically more complex, will rapidly shrink as an inverse function of population size and device power requirements. History shows that tying oneself to a single power source is neither strategically wise nor economically viable. Such a species is unlikely to have a singular will. As with any complex civilisation you wish to name, this civilisation will be affected by financial inequity, political boundaries, the vagaries of local and civ-wide trade rules, weird by-laws, border restrictions, taxation, and so on and so forth. A completely homogenous pan-galactic reliance on one source of fuel and one habitation philosophy is magnificently unlikely. I think there is a danger we might drift off the topic here, as with the last thread which descended into a battle royale over static/mobile habitats. The questions which were specified in the OP relate to civilisations which have ascended or are ascending the Kardashev scale; not civilisations which don't qualify. Those questions are: What type of technological capabilities would you expect such a civ to have, or have solved? What type of issues/problems do you think these civs will run into (anything ranging from technical to political ones...)? And, how do you think we will get our civilization to those milestones? To some degree the issue you raised about a ring or sphere not being a true orbital structure falls into the category of the second question. But it's a trivial and contrived objection: clearly an effort to build any such structure would take that problem into account, so it will never physically arise. BTW, the "millions of habitats" idea you describe was Dyson's original "sphere" concept. Popular fiction has given us the idea of the solid sphere, which always causes some confusion. Conventionally we now use the term "Dyson Swarm" to differentiate the original multi-habitat concept. I suggest we adopt that convention in this thread as necessary to avoid confusion.

This does not bode well as your third reply in your own thread. Is there anything else to discuss, or did you just want to post a proclamation of what is not possible? I do not think there is a good chance that a sensible discussion of "mind/spiritual" means of crossing the interstellar gulf will take place here.

No, he is pointing out that the rationalisation is common to at least one other group who society treats very harshly (and rightly so) for their willingness to abdicate from their responsibility for their actions. But that is not the most on-topic direction we could take from John's post.

I think that maybe I just have a better proportion counter in my head than you do.

I did actually lock it with the "Alacazam" post; I was not just posting that word for fun. Thread re-locked.

Alacazam.

I wouldn't say lazy, but laid back. Brazilians have got their priorities in the right order!