Amid much excitement in 2016, astronomers revealed the discovery of an Earth-sized planet around the star closest to our Sun, Proxima Centauri. This exoplanet, just 4.2 light years from Earth, was close enough to its red dwarf star that water might well exist on its surface.
Alas, now we know that life probably does not live on the planet, at least not on the surface. In March 2016, astronomers using an array of telescopes known as Evryscope observed a "superflare" 10 times larger than any previous one detected from the red dwarf star.
The arXiv. Abstract number: 1804.02001 (About the arXiv). Submitted to AAS Journals.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday April 12 2018, @02:26PM (1 child)
I doubt you would need to use the entire planet's mass to make a dyson-anything composed of relatively thin pieces that scatter the radiation.
Another point to consider is that Proxima b's [wikipedia.org] minimum mass is estimated to be above Earth's: about 1.27 M⊕.
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(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday April 12 2018, @02:33PM
If you don't prop them somehow, thin and lightweight pieces will get blown away by the radiation pressure
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford