Sunday, August 7, 2011

Exploded Planet Hypothesis

Mysterious Sphere in Cygnus
Is the act of contemplating life on other planets in the universe a "scientific" thing to do?

At least in the sense of wondering how they might approach the issue of clean sources of energy compared with the other side of that coin, the many pollution generating sources of energy?

Or is such contemplation an activity properly left to mystics, UFO folk, and others of that "unscientific" ilk?

In prior posts we have mentioned the contemplations of scientist Freeman Dyson, who wondered how civilizations on other planets, if they exist, would deal with the energy crisis our existing civilization faces.

If scientists like Freeman Dyson professionally contemplate, and even go so far as to predict forms of alien energy systems, such as the "bubble" shown in the photo above, then the contemplation of extraterrestrial potential is by definition scientific:

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure originally described by Freeman Dyson. Such a "sphere" would be a system of orbiting solar power satellites meant to completely encompass a star and capture most or all of its energy output. Dyson speculated that such structures would be the logical consequence of the long-term survival and escalating energy needs of a technological civilization, and proposed that searching for evidence of the existence of such structures might lead to the detection of advanced intelligent extraterrestrial life ... In Dyson's original paper, he speculated that sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial civilizations would likely follow a similar power consumption pattern as humans, and would eventually build their own sphere of collectors. Constructing such a system would make such a civilization a Type II Kardashev civilization.

(Wikipedia: Dyson Sphere). There are other strange shapes out there in the cosmos that give scientists pause.

A Dyson Grid?
For example, the photo to the right shows yet another star enclosed within a strange shape.

Scientists go through the exercise of figuring out how natural forces could craft these shapes, while other scientists try to figure out how an alien civilization could do so.

The title of this post alludes to the fact that there is a hypothesis floating around about a planet in our solar system which exploded long ago.

It was said to have been located in the gap between Mars and Jupiter, where now only the debris we call the asteroid belt remains.

Remnant of a failed Dyson Grid?
Let's add to that hypothesis the notion that the planet exploded while a prior civilization which inhabited that planet was engaged in the engineering necessary in order to develop a Dyson energy grid system.

Let's further hypothesize that parts of their grid energy system still remain, and that one part of that Dyson energy grid system is the hexagon on Saturn's north pole.

The elaborate systems talked about by Dyson would quite feasibly be set up on several planets in a solar system energy grid designed to harness clean energy.

Hypothetically, perhaps the people who inhabited the planet that exploded were engaged in efforts to do a Dyson Grid, but came upon an unknown, perhaps they rushed it a bit knowing that the Sun has a limited lifespan, and in the foray perhaps a disaster was triggered that in turn destroyed the planet.

If so, they were probably the first of the human species, since destroying seems to be so human.

The next post in this series is here.