This discussion is not new, and AI doesn’t change much about the unknowns and impossibilities. Dyson sphere—Wikipedia says the idea’s been around since 1937, though only named after Freeman Dyson in 1960, and injected into popular consciousness by Larry Niven’s 1970 novel Ringworld. Ringworld is a more likely IMO structure than a Dyson sphere (because it solves the gravity problem, though it still handwaves the materials question), but really neither are likely to be all that interesting to non-biological intelligence.
If you don’t need an ecosystem with a self-sustaining solar/plant/animal energy cycle, you’re probably better off with many smaller solar-orbital structures, closer to asteroid-field than planets or large-surface stable structures. If you’re thinking bigger than that, it’s not clear that you need to concentrate in solar systems—break up the Sun as fuel for your diaspora of perenneal-ships.
Ok, but the question is unanswerable. It’s not known how to convert conventional matter into whatever is strong enough for the Dyson sphere, so it’s not known how much material is available, it’s not known how much coverage it would have, or what diameter it could be built, or what diameter it would be useful.
The explorations I’d seen before assumed using all the non-solar matter in the system to build a sphere with a radius of Earth’s orbit. Ringworld solutions tended to use this diameter as well.
Swarm or other partial modifications (which I don’t know if there’s a term for, but it’s not Dyson sphere) will have other answers, but I don’t think anyone can answer your questions because it’s not currently feasible, and arguably not desirable.
There’s no reason a “kind” superbeing couldn’t build something that leaves Earth nearly unaffected, but it’s unknown how much less efficient it would be than the naive “just use all the inner planets as source material, and to clear out interference”.
This discussion is not new, and AI doesn’t change much about the unknowns and impossibilities. Dyson sphere—Wikipedia says the idea’s been around since 1937, though only named after Freeman Dyson in 1960, and injected into popular consciousness by Larry Niven’s 1970 novel Ringworld. Ringworld is a more likely IMO structure than a Dyson sphere (because it solves the gravity problem, though it still handwaves the materials question), but really neither are likely to be all that interesting to non-biological intelligence.
If you don’t need an ecosystem with a self-sustaining solar/plant/animal energy cycle, you’re probably better off with many smaller solar-orbital structures, closer to asteroid-field than planets or large-surface stable structures. If you’re thinking bigger than that, it’s not clear that you need to concentrate in solar systems—break up the Sun as fuel for your diaspora of perenneal-ships.
Nod, but, this doesn’t answer the actual question.
Ok, but the question is unanswerable. It’s not known how to convert conventional matter into whatever is strong enough for the Dyson sphere, so it’s not known how much material is available, it’s not known how much coverage it would have, or what diameter it could be built, or what diameter it would be useful.
The explorations I’d seen before assumed using all the non-solar matter in the system to build a sphere with a radius of Earth’s orbit. Ringworld solutions tended to use this diameter as well.
Swarm or other partial modifications (which I don’t know if there’s a term for, but it’s not Dyson sphere) will have other answers, but I don’t think anyone can answer your questions because it’s not currently feasible, and arguably not desirable.
There’s no reason a “kind” superbeing couldn’t build something that leaves Earth nearly unaffected, but it’s unknown how much less efficient it would be than the naive “just use all the inner planets as source material, and to clear out interference”.
I agree we can’t get exact numbers here but it’d be surprising to me if modern material science wasn’t capable of generating some upper/lower bounds.