Speaking of…Science


I was walking with my wife in this morning's frigid sucker hole in the weather when I flashed on a solution to both of our age's major questions: where are the other intelligent life forms, and where is the universe's missing mass?

The answer is breathtakingly simple, and it solves both mysteries. 

The missing intelligences have been present all along, and they're still here.  They've just placed themselves inside Dyson shells.  We can't detect the intelligences because of the lack of emissions, other than gravity, escaping the shells.

The gravity part is key to the other solution.  The so-called missing mass currently is considered to be composed of "dark matter" that doesn't interact with the composition of our universe, except…gravitationally.  How convenient a set of characteristics.

The missing mass, clearly, is ordinary matter; it's just contained within all of those Dyson shells.  After all, there are a double potful of LGMs and BEMs, and they've all built these spheres.

Why would a species do such a thing rather than getting out and about, or at least shouting out their existence to the universe around them?  Speculating on the motives of an alien mindset—that really would be magical thinking.

I’m ready for my NSF and NASA grants, which I promise only to use for good.

Eric Hines

4 comments:

  1. You know, I read somewhere that there was a government program searching for evidence of Dyson spheres (and similar structures). So you may be a little late to the grant money picnic.

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  2. In the Heechee books, an alien civilization is hiding inside the black holes because there are some new and very scary guys in the neighborhood.

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  3. Dyson spheres should be dumping a star's worth of energy in the infrared. To prevent punctures they should have cleaned up all the loose comets and crud in the vicinity (probably needed them and any loose gas for building material anyway), so they shouldn't be locally obscured.

    There looks to be a little wiggle room for such things to exist.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_compact_halo_object

    I suppose aliens would build such things (out of unobtanium, of course) because they don't have faster than light travel, so there's nowhere to go and you have to build your own Wild West.

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  4. Dyson spheres should be dumping a star's worth of energy in the infrared.

    Nah. Waste not, want not. They'll be scooping up all that waste heat and not wasting it.

    Eric Hines

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