Dyson Sphere

Discussion in 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' started by SimpleLogic, Sep 28, 2012.

  1. R. Star

    R. Star Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Did the poster do something to offend you that made you make a rude post like that, or do you just randomly do this for fun?
     
  2. Finn

    Finn Bad Batch of TrekBBS Admiral

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    you are missing my point...

    Besides, this is far from the rudest post on the TrekBBS.
     
  3. Mytran

    Mytran Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Still rude though - and this is the TREK BBS for goodness sake, analysing the series is what we do here!
     
  4. Mutai Sho-Rin

    Mutai Sho-Rin Crusty Old Bastard Moderator

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    This isn't flaming or trolling but it is close and it is just unnecessary. Your defense of your rudeness is also unnecessary. You owe the OP an apology.
     
  5. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

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    Meh, I do think I require one, I took it as a bit of humor.

    :shrug:
     
  6. Tom

    Tom Vice Admiral Admiral

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    The Sphere builders were defeated in 'Enterprise', so there ya go.. Oh wait.. lol
     
  7. Mytran

    Mytran Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Aha! Enterprise is an alternate timeline after all! :lol:
     
  8. RAMA

    RAMA Admiral Admiral

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    No, the Dyson Sphere "phase" is an important milestone...being able to harness all the power of the sun without waste...but as incredbile as it is to believe, is still a stepping stone to more advanced civilizations....

    A good read that has comparisons of such civilizations is Stephen Baxter's "The Timeships".

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Time-Ships-Stephen-Baxter/dp/0061056480

    RAMA
     
  9. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Anybody capable of building a solid sphere as shown in "Relics" would definitely be way beyond the need to do so. A simple solar energy collector "swarm" would be a different matter, and perhaps indeed something of a stepping stone.

    Perhaps Dyson spheres in the solar energy collector sense are part of the Star Trek universe as well, and simply happen to go by some different name? In contrast, the solid sphere clearly was completely unique, and apparently did hold the exclusive right to the name "Dyson Sphere" in the Trek universe...

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  10. The Castellan

    The Castellan Commodore Commodore

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    When dealing with an alien civilization, expect the unexpected, don't think human.
     
  11. El Bridge

    El Bridge Cadet Newbie

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    I have some potential answers for those of you wondering about the fate and nature of the people of the Dyson Sphere.
    WARNING: Spoilers for a Star Trek Adventures episode follow. (Though I don't think it's an official Modiphius episode.)
    It's going to be kind of long because, if you're interested, I want you to be able to really get a feel for it.
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    In the STA episode my gaming group played tonight, we encountered a glowing haze with distributed mass of ½ solar mass over a diameter of ¼ AU, composed of trillions of 30cm cubes. A tiny M class star (a tenth the size of Sol) is at the center of this haze, all of which is surrounded by a subspace field. Inside the field, there are time dilation effects, which increase as you approach the center, where it is running approximately 4 million times faster than it is outside the field. The cubes, composed of an unknown material, absorb 95% of the solar radiation and emit it as heat. They're communicating with each other on a range of frequencies. The communications are both patterned and complex enough to indicate that vast amounts of information are being transmitted, faster than the computer can process. The signals are base 8 math, isolinear not binary, and the code is so complex it can’t be interpreted. This is a distributed computational network, like a giant brain.

    We isolate the frequency one cube is using and hail on that frequency. Immediately, a number of the cubes begin to move and eventually take the shape of our ship, including navigational lights. The lights flash the first five numbers of the Fibonacci sequence. We respond with the next five. The simulacrum ship's lights flash with the first five prime numbers and we respond with the next five. The lights shut off and the area correlating to where engineering would be starts to take on the environmental conditions required to sustain humanoid life, just with very low gravity (15% of normal).

    The away team beams over into a space that roughly corresponds to Engineering, though without any detail like LCARS displays. As soon as we've had a chance to look around, alarms start blaring and Lt. Cmdr. Gar, our Chief Engineer, is trapped in an impenetrable bubble that, we discover, is a manipulated subspace field. She only has ten minutes of air. A console near Lt. Zepht, our Chief Science Officer, has started displaying what appears to be an alien language. After about 8 minutes, Lt. Zepht decodes the language and discovers they are simple logic puzzles. After solving four of these puzzles, Gar is released. Suddenly, a light is emitted from the region of [what would normally be] the warp core and a smell the team associates with sickbay permeates the room. A being is constructed before us, roughly humanoid in appearance. The being says, “I have prepared for this moment. It is good that my preparations were not in vain. You are explorers, yes? We are also explorers. You may refer to me as Mercury. You are now welcome here for a time but that time is short.” Mercury explains that trapping Gar was a test of intelligence and compassion; the alarm was meant to cause stress but they would not have actually allowed harm to come to her. After some very cordial negotiations about correcting their course to avoid destroying a Federation colony and some confusion about the time difference and our level of technology, we get around to a cultural exchange.

    Mercury's people once existed outside the time dilation as a biological species from a star system outside the galactic ecliptic plane. They achieved space flight 22 million years ago (our time). There were only four other nearby systems, all resource poor, so they gave up on space travel. However, as technology advanced, they discovered replicators that resulted in cultural revolution. They began dissolving asteroids and moons for minerals and manufacturing orbital habitats. After many centuries, they deconstructed their homeworld, saving as much wildlife as possible, and constructed a Dyson Sphere. It took tens of thousands of years to build. 100 trillion beings lived comfortably there; civilizations rose and fell over millions of years, dominant sentient species (with the same opossum-like common ancestor) rose and fell, swaths of sphere-dwellers even fell into barbarism at times. Eventually, The Enlightened took over. Mercury's people are The Children of The Enlightened. They wanted to explore, so they downloaded their minds into computer systems to extend life indefinitely, took the stellar corpse of a star, and used subspace field manipulation to set off into the galaxy. They constructed four separate “brains” around stars and began their mass exodus into simulated reality. Some members wished to remain behind on the Dyson Sphere and it is feared they have perished. The four "brains" chose different paths; one chose to explore this galaxy, one may be headed to the Andromeda Galaxy, the other two have been gone for millions of years.

    Each cube is thousands of individuals. Though they do experience emotions, they don't remember what it was like to be biological. They sometimes take "the best parts" of themself and "the best parts" of another to create a new individual to interact with but this reproduction is for interest rather than from necessity. We share our respective cultural databases and they become enamored with the idea of eating for pleasure and cooking as art, something their species never did.

    Eventually, he tells us that his body was created without necessary systems like immune function and says he must depart. The body is deconstructed in front of us and we beam back to our ship with petabytes of star charts and cultural data streaming into our computer.

    This story isn't canon but it's a fun way to imagine the builders of the Dyson Sphere and what might have happened to them.
     
  12. JirinPanthosa

    JirinPanthosa Admiral Admiral

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    I assume the people who build the sphere left because it was about to go boom.

    You could also go the cliche 'Destroyed themselves with technology' angle.

    The sheer amount of resources you'd need to build a sphere with a radius of millions of miles is hard to imagine. I guess they probably replicated most of the metal with the energy from the sun. Given what we know of self-replicating mines, I wonder if they found a way to create large structures that have blueprints to gradually replicate themselves.
     
  13. Farscape One

    Farscape One Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Given how large the interior of the sphere is, a series could be done centered on exploring it.

    A miniseries, at the very least.
     
  14. XCV330

    XCV330 Premium Member

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    They could have just given up on the universe and uploaded their consciousness.
    There is a hypothesis that's why SETI hasn't worked so far. Once cultures reach the level of Building dyson sphere's and other mega projects they just plug in and tune out.
     
  15. Maurice

    Maurice Snagglepussed Admiral

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    What the heck is a "Star Trek Adventures episode" an a "official Modiphius episode"?
     
  16. Kor

    Kor Fleet Admiral Admiral

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  17. Mutai Sho-Rin

    Mutai Sho-Rin Crusty Old Bastard Moderator

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    Yes, its a zombie thread resurrection but with a lot of new content. No harm, no foul.
     
  18. Maurice

    Maurice Snagglepussed Admiral

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  19. Steven P Bastien

    Steven P Bastien Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Maybe the inhabitants of the Dyson sphere just left for a few years and then came back, much like people came back to this thread after 7 years.
     
    Kor and NewHeavensNewEarth like this.
  20. JirinPanthosa

    JirinPanthosa Admiral Admiral

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    Or on theme of TNG, maybe they evolved into energy beings.