>the sun beams a total of 120,000 terrawatts per day onto our planet. That's 10,000 times the amount that flows through our industrial civilization. Should be "terrawatts", not "terrawatts per day". (I stopped reading there. There 100s of 1000s of people who know enough physics never to make such a mistake. I'll read one of them instead.)
While you're at it shouldn't it be "stellar power" etc? Unless the aliens are supposed to be building a Dyson Sphere around the Sun which would be decidedly easier to observe.
I've never understood such assumptions of intelligence. "If a civilization could do X, they could also do Y and Z." Says who? It's not like we're experts in alien intelligence. How can we be, when we have never encountered one?
All true, but applying common sense still has a point. For example, do we want to broadcast the fact of our own existence across interstellar distances? This is actually an active debate topic among those who think about stuff like this. Ironically, after a brief spell of broadcasting our existence with powerful radio and radar waves, we're gradually shutting down the big transmitters for reasons of economy and effic…
>A civilization that built a Dyson Sphere would have to go to great lengths to avoid detection, either by getting rid of its waste heat in some novel way, or by building massive radiators that give off heat so cool that it would be undetectable against the cosmic microwave background, the faint afterglow of the Big Bang. So if a civilization were to completely mask itself in the EM spectrum, the only way to detect th…
>>A civilization might do this either to hide from others
Why would they try to hide this from others? Are we trying to hide our satellites, or our probes that we are sending out?
>A civilization that built a Dyson Sphere would have to go to great lengths to avoid detection, either by getting rid of its waste heat in some novel way, or by building massive radiators that give off heat so cool that it would be undetectable against the cosmic microwave background, the faint afterglow of the Big Bang. So if a civilization were to completely mask itself in the EM spectrum, the only way to detect th…
>This brings up another interesting hypothesis: dark matter is actually the computronium of all of the alien civilizations in the universe that have achieved a technological singularity.
Technological singularity describes the aftermath as an entity achieves an intelligence significantly superior to that of the average unaided human mind. The term gets thrown at a lot of things that don't seem to have anything to do with it. In this case I don't see why humans level intelligence is not enough to build a Dyson Sphere.
> Why wouldn't they want to attract the attention of lesser beings? Because they might attract the attention of greater beings.
>>Because they might attract the attention of greater beings. As a life form we don't seem to be taking any precautions to 'hide' from others. Why are assuming others would like to 'hide'?
It could very well be that the only civilizations that still exist are the ones that are good at hiding. All the others (even if they are the big majority) might have been destroyed after giving a signal of life/existence.
>A civilization that built a Dyson Sphere would have to go to great lengths to avoid detection, either by getting rid of its waste heat in some novel way, or by building massive radiators that give off heat so cool that it would be undetectable against the cosmic microwave background, the faint afterglow of the Big Bang. So if a civilization were to completely mask itself in the EM spectrum, the only way to detect th…
>>A civilization might do this either to hide from others Why would they try to hide this from others? Are we trying to hide our satellites, or our probes that we are sending out?
One civilization could be at war with another and trying to hide their sources of energy.
>>A civilization might do this either to hide from others Why would they try to hide this from others? Are we trying to hide our satellites, or our probes that we are sending out?
One civilization could be at war with another and trying to hide their sources of energy.
It looks really naive that civilizations so advanced to blot out an entire star for its energy can't even find a way to co exist in such a vast universe.
But looking at how fellow humans behave with each other. I would say that is definitely a possibility.