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Poll Dryson Array vs. Dyson Sphere

Is a Dryson Array a better choice in harvesting and converting energy into electricity?

  • Yes - Explain answer

    Votes: 3 50.0%
  • No - Explain your answer

    Votes: 3 50.0%

  • Total voters
    6

Dryson

Commodore
Commodore
Are we looking for alien life in the Universe in the wrong place? Is a Dyson Sphere just to extraordinary to be believable? What about a simpler method of aliens using the available resources of their solar system to generate electricity for their civilization? Where would this simple form of electrical power come from?

The storms located on the surfaces of Gas Giants.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/28/healt...red-spot-heat0801AMVODtopLink&linkId=27104075

After reading the article I began to think that a space faring civilization would be better suited to use the storms such as the Red Spot on Jupiter to convert heat into available electricity. Electricity that could then be stored in capacitors or batteries and transported to other planets and moons in the alien solar system as well as the moons orbiting the Gas Giant.

The Dryson Collection Array would look similar to a class graduation ring. The collection array itself would be centered over the storm where thousands of thermoelectric generators or TEG's would collect the heat and convert the heat into electricity. Each cluster of TEG's would be dedicated to a planet or a moon's electrical needs. The band of the TEG Array would wrap around the Gas Giant like the band on the ring around the finger where sections of the band would house batteries and capacitors to store and load the electrical energy for travel to the moon or planet. Launch and equipment bays, housing and other human facilities would complete the TEG Array with other systems built into the array being used to power the electrical systems from the storm itself.

Harvesting heat from the storms of a Gas Giant would be more economical if not safer due to less radiation shielding needed to be used to protect the array from the sun's radiation emission as well as ensuring that if the sun had giant solar flares the array would not be damaged.

Dyson Sphere - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
 
Statites are better, near-er term.
http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2013/08/statites-close-to-sun.html

If you want something that will blow your mind--go pick up a copy of the October 1982 issue of SCIENCE DIGEST.

On page 60 you will see the article "CITIES OF THE SUN by David Egge--with both art and text by him.

He has a wonderful painting of the interior of a Dyson megasphere.

It's the stuff of dreams--but I cannot find it on the web.
 
Easier to build an ring along the ecliptic plane, but more energy can be harvested in a sphere.

More energy can be harvested at the sun, you are correct, but the safety hazards with harvesting the storm spots on a Gas Giant are less. A sun attracts everything in the solar system because it is the largest source of gravity. A Gas Giant is simply in the way of those objects being pulled to the sun.
 
It really seems to me that something like harnessing the storm energies and electromagnetic fields of gas giants to produce power would be a *prerequisite* for getting started in building a Dyson Sphere. So my answer is, I guess, that one part of the poll question isn't relevant to the other.
 
Ah! There was a poster like that on SetiAlpha 5 named Captain Quacer. Typed with catcher's mitts on and drove the mod crazy.

Thanks for the heads-up. (A few Web searches failed to reveal KenM's notoriety.)
 
Then there's the Tyson-Tyson Array, where energy is generated by a boxer beating you with a chicken.
Also the Bison Array, in which energy is generated via stampede.
 
I know most on this forum consider "electric sun" a joke. But just for the sake of argument, assume the Sun is part of a plasma circuit—charge flows in and out. Now imagine the Homer Simpson moment when a Dyson sphere is completed. D'oh!
 
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