Will We Ever Utilize Dyson Spheres?

[SkepticJ]

My point is that how can we say that nanotechnology cannot be capable of something like building a Dyson sphere when we as a human race are only at the doorstep of nanotechnology.

I'm not saying it can't; I'm saying it will never transmute a chemical element into another kind of chemical element. Transmutation of elements by chemical means is impossible(You don't see a lot of alchemists with jobs at university labs doing their thing do you?) Nuclear means is another matter, but that's not nanotechnology. I suppose one could call that picotech. Lead has been turned into gold by nuclear means. The problem is it costs far, far, far more to do it than to just mine the stuff from the ground.
Something that might work, some far away someday from now, is an idea being talked about in the hard SF worldbuilding group I'm in. Picobots. They wouldn't even be made of atoms, but instead a very very dense and strong material called monopolium. We have the heavy math(done by an almost Dr. that's a member of the group) and scientific theories that it's based on. If those theories hold up then someday monopolium could be real. To give you a quick idea of how amazing a material it'd be:
1 cubic centimeter of the material would mass 2 metric tonnes
It would be about 2,000 times as strong as carbon nanotubes per weight, and without the compressional load weakness nanotubes have.
It'd have a melting temp. so high it could survive going inside a star.(I forget the exact temp. I'll have to ask)

 

[Danger]

Geez... as much as I hate to agree with Russ about anything ( ), he's absolutely got this nailed. To start with, the OP is citing a journalist who by his own admission knows nothing of science. Good grief, man... he uses the term 'nano bacteria' in his introduction. If there'd ever been any other kind, our species wouldn't exist. I'm pretty sure that if there were bacteria the size of poodles, we never would have survived this long.
Nanotech is a wonderful field of endeavour, and holds immense promise for the future, but its primary purpose is to achieve things that demand a microscopic scale. First and foremost is in medical applications, wherein nanotech devices can be introduced into a living body to either measure things that now require expensive scanning techniques, or to replace or reinforce failing organs. A good example of a combination thereof would be an artificial pancrease that can measure blood glucose levels and use micro-pump infusion to introduce proper insulin supplies. Nanotech will never take over brute-force applications that are better handled by a bulldozer or dynamite.
And to Physicsenthusiast... Einstein was wrong an awful lot more often than he was right. That's what made him a good scientist; he stayed at it until he got it right, and learned from his mistakes. Everybody screws things up on a grand scale with some disturbing frequency. Those who treat it as a learning experience rather than a failure are likely to come up with something great. The rest just quit. Just look at how many failures Edison had with his light bulb until he found the right filament material.

 

[Mk]

Einstein was wrong an awful lot more often than he was right.

Everybody screws things up on a grand scale with some disturbing frequency.

Those who treat it as a learning experience rather than a failure are likely to come up with something great.

Yay! I'm like Einstein!

 

[Danger]

Yay! I'm like Einstein!

Hey, Mk! Long time, friend. And yeah... a sense of humour definitely helps.

 

[PhysicsEnthusiast]

Science is like a building. One floor is built on top of the previous. It is extremely rare that more than a small fraction of the floors are knocked down to be replaced by new floors. Ie, no amount of future scientific investigation is going to change our understanding of f=ma, for example. And we never, ever knock the whole thing down and start from scratch.

Whoops, I actually agreed with you on this in page 2 of this thread. Now I got to change my mind. Why you ask? well...You ever hear of the Uncertainty Principle theorized by Professor Werner Heisenberg? Ever hear his famous statement in which Einstein himself was forced to concede to, thus prompting Einstein to spend his later years trying to formulate a Unified Theory (which of course failed and in turn, inspired a newer generation of physicists to pursue the String-Theory, M-Theory, and Super-Symmetry theory)?

Heiseinberg's famous statement was:"The more precisely the POSITION is determined, the less precisely the MOMENTUM is known". He was talking about the unobservable orbits of an electron around an atom. That each "orbit" was dependent on the perception of each individual viewer. Heh, even Einstein called this non-sense although later on, was inspired by it -- why he felt the need to pursue a Unified Theory in the first place.

So whatever you say, is also subject to the uncertainty principle (in theory of course). You see "Physics" is all based on theories (even to this day), and that's why we must never jump to conclusions by saying Dyson spheres can never be built. It's always wise to keep an open mind -- because the greatest physicists of our "time" always do.

 

[yourdadonapogostick]

what does {\Delta}x{\Delta}{\rho}{\geq}\frac{\hbar}{2} have to do with F=ma?

 

[Danger]

"The more precisely the POSITION is determined, the less precisely the MOMENTUM is known".

What a novel and disturbing concept!
The fact is, there are definite practical limitations to the effects of uncertainty. It's essentially non-existent on a macroscopic scale.
Unless I missed something along the line, no one has said that Dyson spheres are impossible. The question is in whether or not they would be practical. If, for instance, we would have to gather material from another stellar system we'd might as well just move there.

 

[SkepticJ]

Unless I missed something along the line, no one has said that Dyson spheres are impossible. The question is in whether or not they would be practical. If, for instance, we would have to gather material from another stellar system we'd might as well just move there.

The point of them would be living space and/or gathering all the output of a single star. The material to build a suprastellar shell, at least a lot of them around a star, might have to come from other star systems. However, by building them you get millions to billions of times the living space of Earth. How many star systems would one have to move humans to in order to equal that? A lot of teraforming would be involved with moving to billions of systems. There probably aren't Earths ready "made" in every system! Let's say we found another Earth nearby though. It would have life of its own(I'd have to in order to fit the name of Earth) We could take the planet for ourselves; but unless we have to take the planet though, wouldn't it be better to preserve it as a Galactic Park?