Relics: Saw it again
- Thread starter EnriqueH
- Start date
Actually, it wouldn't be invisible at all, from afar it would look like a giant disk of infrared light, plus it would block the light of any star that would pass behind it. I'll say, to 24th century censors it would be as visible as a any other star system and rendered more conspicuous by its uniqueness. I don't buy that they would have missed it for so long, not for one second.
I don't see how occultation studies would reveal the sphere: there's not that much motion in the skies, and odds would be against an observable occultation occurring.
As for infrared glow, the difference between "giant" and "dwarf" would be nonexistent: the thing would at best look like yer regular dark brown dwarf.
Naturally, if stealth were the aim, the latter problem would be dealt with. That's one thing the excellent "Atomic Rockets" site gets dead wrong: heat emissions don't defeat stealth in space. One can always temporarily pack the heat and dump it at a suitable distance in a manner untraceable to the point of origin. Or, with just a little bit of trickery that would certainly be available to somebody who can construct a solid Dyson sphere, one can wrap up the heat in a neat package for millions of years, perhaps even turning it into a weapon, all without breaking the laws of thermodynamics. (Trek-level technology nevertheless does break those with ease, mind you. Perhaps it helps to have all those parallel universes, subspaces and phased realms available for dumping of stuff?)
Or one may pump it all in a specific direction and bet that the enemy isn't watching from that exact direction; a good bet if the heat beam is narrow enough.
Timo Saloniemi
As for infrared glow, the difference between "giant" and "dwarf" would be nonexistent: the thing would at best look like yer regular dark brown dwarf.
Naturally, if stealth were the aim, the latter problem would be dealt with. That's one thing the excellent "Atomic Rockets" site gets dead wrong: heat emissions don't defeat stealth in space. One can always temporarily pack the heat and dump it at a suitable distance in a manner untraceable to the point of origin. Or, with just a little bit of trickery that would certainly be available to somebody who can construct a solid Dyson sphere, one can wrap up the heat in a neat package for millions of years, perhaps even turning it into a weapon, all without breaking the laws of thermodynamics. (Trek-level technology nevertheless does break those with ease, mind you. Perhaps it helps to have all those parallel universes, subspaces and phased realms available for dumping of stuff?)
Or one may pump it all in a specific direction and bet that the enemy isn't watching from that exact direction; a good bet if the heat beam is narrow enough.
Timo Saloniemi
I admit this may be a bit of handwavium on my part, but I guess I assume any race advanced enough to build a shell around their star, much less an even larger one, is also advanced enough to have pretty darn good ways of trying to hide its existence if properly motivated.
Destiny depicted the shell as completely stopping all light from coming out of New Erigol's system. The crew of the U.S.S. Titan was attracted by noticing that the light that was previously emitting from the system abruptly stopped.
The problem is that they have to evacuate the heat in a way that doesn't cost them energy otherwise it defeats the whole purpose of the sphere. Besides, I don't see how they can prevent the material from the sphere itself to radiate in relation to its temperature. Hell that's how you can measure the temperature of an object in space, by analyzing the light it emits.
Just as an aside: clearly, the purpose of this sphere is not to trap the total energy output of the star. The habitats ought to be on the outside (where there might be natural gravity for them, too) if that were the goal...
A solid Dyson is a fortress, not an engine. Yet for all we know, there was a traditional Dyson inside the solid one, capturing a certain percentage of the star's output to keep the fortress running (and creating day/night cycles if needed).
That's Space Stealth 101: you keep the outer shell at three Kelvin. If you are going to have waste heat anyway, there's no reason to hold back: you can add a cooling system, no matter how inefficient as long as it is totally effective, and then deal with all the waste heat at one go. Say, by packing it in containers you fire back to the star! Even if your tech doesn't allow you to outright cheat the laws of thermodynamics, you can always fight an infinitely long delaying battle.
Timo Saloniemi
All of this includes one unexpressed assumption, IE that the sphere is still inhabited by the aliens, BUT as we know it is no longer the case, hasn't been for an indeterminate period of time, most likely a very long time. Therefore whatever means the aliens MIGHT have used to prevent the sphere from irradiating infrared light are no longer in place.
The sphere therefore SHOULD irradiate infrared light. QED
Why should machinery stop operating merely because the operators died out or left a few aeons ago?
Most Trek machinery is automated and self-maintaining, as one would expect from any culture more advanced than Victorian Britain (we're real slackers in that respect - blame it on capitalism). Some spacecraft have been operating more or less fine after hundreds of thousands of years. The Dyson sphere was abandoned an unknown time ago, but we already witness many of its systems working perfectly:
1) The tractor beams
2) The doors
3) The artificial gravity keeping the habitats attached to the inner surface
In addition, it is established that the sphere is invisible at a distance!
Stealth in space is just a matter of means and motivation, and a builder of a solid Dyson has already demonstrated both aplenty... Things like rationale are left as an exercise to the audience!
Timo Saloniemi
The tractor beams grabbing Enterprise and pulling it inside seems like a malfunction to me or at least a symptom that some of the higher systems may be off. Come on! It's taking a ship/thing regardless of identification or purpose and pulls it inside, for all they knew it could be a Trojan horse or even a bomb! So it's safe to say that not all of the sphere systems are in working order, especially the ones ensuring the safety of the people living inside. Doors are there to keep people out, not to let in anybody who asks.
The other possibility is Scotty never believed Kirk really was dead. They never had a body. How many times had his colleagues been given up for dead before? For Kirk to come back... well he'd be briefly proven right.
He may have heard of the nexus, after all Guinan was there so she may have told him about that, if only to reassure him that Kirk may not have been dead.
That'd depend on whether the sphere is a fortress or a forum. If the latter, an "anti-bouncer" at each door would be a must!
OTOH, in the context of the fortress model, the door worked rather handily, too: it grabbed a nosy intruder, disabled her systems, and threw her into the sun!
Seriously, forks, that's the way a fortress ought to deal with enemies. Destroying them outside would leave evidence of destruction. An "inside job" would be much neater, and would allow for all sorts of options, including boarding and interrogation of the intruders. Provided the Dysonians were still about, that is.
Timo Saloniemi
That'd depend on whether the sphere is a fortress or a forum. If the latter, an "anti-bouncer" at each door would be a must!
OTOH, in the context of the fortress model, the door worked rather handily, too: it grabbed a nosy intruder, disabled her systems, and threw her into the sun!
Seriously, forks, that's the way a fortress ought to deal with enemies. Destroying them outside would leave evidence of destruction. An "inside job" would be much neater, and would allow for all sorts of options, including boarding and interrogation of the intruders. Provided the Dysonians were still about, that is.
Timo Saloniemi
I don't buy that. It only grabbed the ship AFTER it has sent a standard hail. If your hypothesis was correct, it wouldn't have waited and caught the enterprise as soon as it got close enough. Plus if the goal was to destroy the ship it would have done a more thorough job of disabling it. They were able to repair the Enterprise soon enough to get her out of the decaying orbit. Plus I find it strange that such an advanced technology wasn't aware of the ship light years before it got there. The whole sphere seems like a decaying piece of very ancient technology.
Oh, the level of disabling the E-D would have been more than sufficient if the Dysonians were in there waiting for the intruders. More destruction, and the boarding party might have been unable to find out enough about the intruders or appropriate their vessel for further study and possible use...
As for the moment of capture, it's noteworthy that neither ship appeared to have sent any message before falling victim to the sphere. That Picard didn't inform Starfleet right off the bat is odd protocol, but consistent with how he and other skippers want to perform their own studies before reporting back; that the sphere did not see reason to act sooner would just be a consequence of that odd protocol...
That the Jenol*n managed to activate an apparently short-ranged distress beacon was still disastrous for the sphere's supposed fortress function, but that's again more related to the users of the sphere being gone than to its rudimentary automation going haywire.
Timo Saloniemi
As for the moment of capture, it's noteworthy that neither ship appeared to have sent any message before falling victim to the sphere. That Picard didn't inform Starfleet right off the bat is odd protocol, but consistent with how he and other skippers want to perform their own studies before reporting back; that the sphere did not see reason to act sooner would just be a consequence of that odd protocol...
That the Jenol*n managed to activate an apparently short-ranged distress beacon was still disastrous for the sphere's supposed fortress function, but that's again more related to the users of the sphere being gone than to its rudimentary automation going haywire.
Timo Saloniemi
"Caesar can do no wrong!" If something doesn't work according to your theory you blame it on a malfunction due to the people being gone, if it does then you see proof of their intention. You can turn anything into anything with that kind of dual reasoning. Imagine if it were the reverse, IE if the things that seem to go your way are in fact caused by malfunctions and the ones that goes contrary are the result of the sphere accomplishing its purpose, then you could be totally wrong.
What are you talking about?
