Could We Build Solar Panels Around The Sun? (Dyson Spheres and Rings)
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2018-05-06
·
1,032 words · ~5 min read
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thanks for watching techwiki for more great videos explaining everything tech
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click the subscribe button then enable notifications with the bell icon so you
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won't miss any future videos do you have any idea how much power the
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sun sends out into space it's over 380
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yada watts nearly the equivalent of 92
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billion megatons of tnt every second i
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mean just think about how many hot pockets that can microwave but seriously
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though only a tiny fraction of this power actually reaches the earth and
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while this is a good thing in some respects i mean we'd all be vaporized if
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that much energy hit us all at once the sun's energy is responsible in one
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way or another for basically everything on earth so wouldn't it be cool if we
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could harness all that potential well probably but this is basically the
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definition of easier said than done i mean the best we've come up with here
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at techwiki is maybe covering the australian outback and solar panels but
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another idea that's been kicked around quite a bit is the dyson sphere
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and no i'm not talking about the ball shape thing on an overpriced vacuum
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cleaner a dyson sphere is a shell source built around a star like the sun to
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capture its energy output so it can be used later for just about anything and
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if you're sitting there thinking nope enough Techquickie for me today because
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this is clearly science fiction i can't really say i blame you because
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it is not only is there probably not even
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enough matter in our entire solar system to surround the sun with a big eggshell
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thing but because of the way gravity works when the sphere surrounds an
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object there wouldn't be anything to keep it from bumping into the sun which
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would be a galactically awful disaster for what i hope for obvious reasons
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but other dyson-esque solutions could help us solve our resource crisis one
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day and make everything from more powerful computing to paying just a
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nickel on your power bill every year possible in the future now one idea is
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to put a bunch of energy collectors into orbit around the sun forming a dyson
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ring really not all that dissimilar to how we currently have tons of man-made
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satellites orbiting the earth now these dyson satellites would be fitted with
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large energy collectors similar to solar panels now obviously we've had visible
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light solar power for quite some time now but recent scientific development
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has produced infrared collectors and since over 90 of the sun's emitted
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energy is in the form of either visible or infrared light it isn't absurd to
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think we could have collection technology one day efficient enough to
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grab huge amounts of it other proposals call for building
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multiple dyson rings around the sun to form a cage or a swarm of sorts or even
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using structures called solar sails that are so thin and reflective that they're
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actually pushed by the sun's radiation but also pulled inward by the sun's
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gravity at the same time rendering them stable solar cells have actually already
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been deployed for other applications but of course while all of this is at least
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technically feasible unlike the hollow sphere we discussed earlier there are
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still large obstacles to overcome ignoring the challenges of getting all
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the energy back to earth and everything from tethers and space elevators with
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giant wires to beaming concentrated sunlight directly back to the earth's
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surface and hoping it doesn't turn into a giant death ray has been proposed
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actually collecting the construction materials is also a massive undertaking
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one popular idea involves sending robots to mercury to mine useful raw materials
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like iron that could be used to manufacture energy collectors which
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would in turn provide more energy to expand the dyson structure further
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now something like this would obviously still take quite a bit of time to
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accomplish but the hope is that as more and more dyson collectors were built
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production can ramp up exponentially or at least that's what we would plan to
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tell the emperor if he shows up displeased with our current lack of
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techwiki like this video if you liked it dislike it if you didn't leave a comment
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with your ideas for future videos and let us know if you'd like to see more of these sort of speculative futurology
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future tech kinds of videos or maybe if you want to say
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hey stick to things that aren't dyson rings that we actually can use right now
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