Imperfect efficiency isn’t because it’s transparent (as everyone keeps trying to say, it doesn’t have to let through any sunlight at all) - it’s because of Carnot efficiency. If you want to convert sunlight into electrical energy, you can’t do it perfectly, which means your Dyson swarm heats up, which means it radiates light in the infrared.
So if 2⁄3 of the sun’s energy is getting re-radiated in the infrared, Earth would actually stay warm enough to keep its atmosphere gaseous—a little guessing gives an average surface temperature of −60 Celsius.
So if 2⁄3 of the sun’s energy is getting re-radiated in the infrared, Earth would actually stay warm enough to keep its atmosphere gaseous—a little guessing gives an average surface temperature of −60 Celsius.
That is, until the Matrioshka brain gets built, in which case assuming no efficiency gains, the radiation will drop to 44% of its original, then 30%, then 20%, etc.
A shell in a Matrioshka brain (more generally, a Dyson sphere being used for computation) reradiates 100% of the energy it captures, just at a lower temperature.
Yeah, the energy radiated to infinity only gets reduced if it’s being used for something long-term, like disassembling the sun or sending off energy-intensive intergalactic probes.
Imperfect efficiency isn’t because it’s transparent (as everyone keeps trying to say, it doesn’t have to let through any sunlight at all) - it’s because of Carnot efficiency. If you want to convert sunlight into electrical energy, you can’t do it perfectly, which means your Dyson swarm heats up, which means it radiates light in the infrared.
So if 2⁄3 of the sun’s energy is getting re-radiated in the infrared, Earth would actually stay warm enough to keep its atmosphere gaseous—a little guessing gives an average surface temperature of −60 Celsius.
That is, until the Matrioshka brain gets built, in which case assuming no efficiency gains, the radiation will drop to 44% of its original, then 30%, then 20%, etc.
A shell in a Matrioshka brain (more generally, a Dyson sphere being used for computation) reradiates 100% of the energy it captures, just at a lower temperature.
Yeah, the energy radiated to infinity only gets reduced if it’s being used for something long-term, like disassembling the sun or sending off energy-intensive intergalactic probes.