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posted by martyb on Friday June 22 2018, @02:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the star-wars:-where-combatants-toss-stars-at-each-other dept.

How an Advanced Civilization Could Stop Dark Energy From Preventing Their Future Exploration

For the sake of his study, which recently appeared online under the title "Life Versus Dark Energy: How An Advanced Civilization Could Resist the Accelerating Expansion of the Universe", Dr. Dan Hooper considered how civilizations might be able to reverse the process of cosmic expansion. In addition, he suggests ways in which humanity might looks[sic] for signs of such a civilization.

[...] This harvesting, according to Dr. Hooper, would consist of building unconventional Dyson Spheres that would use the energy they collected from stars to propel them towards the center of the species' civilization. High-mass stars are likely to evolve beyond the main sequence before reaching the destination of the central civilization and low-mass stars would not generate enough energy (and therefore acceleration) to avoid falling beyond the horizon.

For these reasons, Dr. Hooper concludes that stars with masses of between 0.2 and 1 Solar Masses will be the most attractive targets for harvesting. In other words, stars that are like our Sun (G-type, or yellow dwarf), orange dwarfs (K-type), and some M-type (red dwarf) stars would all be suitable for a Type III civilization's purposes.

[...] Based on the assumption that such a civilization could travel at 1 – 10% the speed of light, Dr. Hooper estimates that they would be able to harvest stars out to a co-moving radius of approximately 20 to 50 Megaparsecs (about 65.2 million to 163 million light-years). Depending on their age, 1 to 5 billion years, they would be able to harvest stars within a range of 1 to 4 Megaparsecs (3.3 million to 13 million light-years) or up to several tens of Megaparsecs.

In addition to providing a framework for how a sufficiently-advanced civilization could survive cosmic acceleration, Dr. Hooper's paper also provides new possibilities in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI). While his study primarily addresses the possibility that such a mega-civilization will emerge in the future (perhaps it will even be our own), he also acknowledges the possibility that one could already exist.

Kardashev scale. One parsec is equivalent to a distance of approximately 3.26156 light years. Corrections made above.


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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Friday June 22 2018, @04:07PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 22 2018, @04:07PM (#696796) Journal

    Kardashev Type III? In other words, call the Q continuum?

    As for your suggestion of dragging the Earth into the Sun, we can do better. I think I have mentioned this before.

    A Donaldson sphere is a mega structure constructed around the earth.
    It will keep out the aliens.
    It will prevent the aliens from detecting us.
    (We can make the aliens pay for it.)
    It will block out the sun, so moving stars becomes unnecessary.
    Earth will have eternal night, so we'll need more energy, but nightclubs will always be open.
    The left wing liberal conspiracy known as "clean energy" and "renewables" will be screwed!
    This will force us to use Clean Coal. We'll get the coal, and clean it all up.
    You'll love it, I promise. Everyone who has ever seen one of my Donald-son spheres has just loved it. It will be the biggest bestest sphere you've ever seen. Trust me. I know my spheres.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
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