Remember the scene in Avengers:Infinity war when Thor takes the full power of a star to provide enough energy to create stormbreaker? What if I told you that in the next nearly 100 years we could use the sun’s energy on earth.
In the 1900’s some scientists came up with a theory in which a hypothetical megastructure could be used to completely encompass a star (the sun) and capture a large percentage of its power output. This theoretical idea is called the Dyson Sphere.
The earth only receives a tiny fraction of the Sun's energy. Building a structure such as the dyson sphere would enable the Earth's entire civilization to harvest far more energy. Although as of today, these megastructures aren’t possible because making a stable dyson sphere is far beyond humanity's current engineering capacity.
But even if we go far in the future, creating a solid ‘shell’ or ‘ring’ around the sun is mechanically impossible. Therefore scientists came up with another variant to the idea that is far more viable than the concept of the ‘shell’ that is the dyson swarm. The dyson swarm is a form of a panel biosphere in which a loose collection or swarm of panels that could take in or pass the sun’s energy (collect the energy and pass it elsewhere) are aligned in independent orbits around the sun. There are also other variants such as the Dyson Bubble or the Dyson shell that are far more viable than the ‘shell’.
This entire idea will be impossible in the near 50 years but could be brought into reality by the next century. This is majorly because manufacturing the objects needed for any of the variants (let's take the Dyson swarm) can’t be done on earth, for making these we will have to disassemble an entire planet. Scientists believe that for this the best possible option is mercury; this is because 1: it is the closest to the sun. 2: its low gravitational force makes it easier for shooting satellites and rockets near the sun. 3: it is believed that mercury contains strong metals that can withstand the sun's heat.
But we still need a lot of time to make this possible . We haven’t yet been on mercury so creating an entire manufacturing base there could itself be impossible and who knows, this idea may never be a reality and will only live in books.
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