[ExI] The strange star that has serious scientists talking about an alien megastructure

Anders Sandberg anders at aleph.se
Fri Oct 16 09:18:37 UTC 2015


On 2015-10-15 15:52, Dan TheBookMan wrote:
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/10/15/the-strange-star-that-has-serious-scientists-talking-about-an-alien-megastructure/
>
My two pence:
http://aleph.se/andart2/space/likely-not-even-a-microdyson/

Still, there is an interesting astrophysics question here: if you have a 
Dyson swarm and leave it with no guidance, over time it will likely 
coalesce into planet(s). How fast is this process?

I guess the answer depends on (1) the timescale of a ring of equidistant 
collectors coalescing (which in turn is related to Maxwell's work on the 
stability of Saturn's rings; see 
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.26.5176 for a 
take on the control problem), and (2) the effect of having different 
inclination rings near each other. Any ideas?


-- 
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University

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