Sam Altman On Harvesting Star Power

It’s getting a shot in the arm today with a headline from The Information that Sam Altman is talking about Dyson spheres, and colonizing the light cone.

For most of us who aren’t NASA nerds, this is all Greek. What is the light cone, and how do you colonize it? And what is a Dyson sphere?

But in the end, these kinds of previously theoretical technologies are becoming more viable with actual experimentation aimed at gleaning energy from the stars.

The Dyson Sphere

A Dyson sphere is a theoretical construct formulated by Freeman Dyson circa 1960, where some existing system would harness power from a nearby star, and send it somewhere else – presumably, to Earth.

Some of the leading theories on Dyson spheres have suggested that it would be a series of satellites, and not a single unit, that would scoop up that power and transfer it across deep space.

“Dyson spheres … suffer from a fatal flaw: They are catastrophically unstable,” writes Paul Sutter at LiveScience. “But now an engineer claims to have figured out a way to stabilize these structures — and all it takes is two stars.”

Sutter chronicles some of the work of Colin McInnes, an engineer at the University of Glasgow, who suggests that with the right star duo, and stable gravitation, a Dyson sphere may be viable.

But there’s still the question of sending that power to ground: McInnes’s work was based, not specifically on human aims, but on any civilization, (like alien lizards for example,) making one of these contraptions.

How would humans do this? With the understanding that cabling cannot be used to transfer or direct the energy in question, that leaves the technique of electromagnetic radiation.

However, as of 2023, we actually have the first experiment of its kind to successfully transmit power to the Earth in this way – it’s called MAPLE, and it was developed at Cal Tech.

“To the best of our knowledge, no one has ever demonstrated wireless energy transfer in space, even with expensive rigid structures,” said Dr. Ali Hajimiri, Co-Director of the Space-Based Solar Power Project, in a press statement. “We are doing it with flexible, lightweight structures and with our own integrated circuits. This is a first!”

So that brings the Dyson sphere one more step towards reality.

The Enormity of Space

As for the “light cone,” deep space insiders point out that it’s a term to denote that vast stretch of space to which light could emanate from the Earth. In other words, if you can construct Dyson spheres around stars, you could do that anywhere in the light cone.

And you could call that a “colony,” since you’re harvesting natural commodities - in this case, star power.

We’re probably going to hear more about how the head of OpenAI and other pioneering innovators are talking about this kind of space exploration and energy capture.

At the same time, Altman and crew are engaged in this effort toward nuclear fusion, as an alternative way to provide large amounts of power for data centers and LLM operations.

So deep space is likely going to be a focus for business and government in this decade. Stay tuned for more.

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