How Destroying Mercury Would Help Humanity

The fact that the Dyson Sphere was actually inspired by a sci-fi novel goes to show that its not the knowledge that inspires ideas, its the imagination. To me that's absolutely beautiful.

Astrum in 2014: Mercury is so interesting! Astrum in 2024: Mercury is not necessary 💀

We just gonna ignore that nuclear can power earth for thousands of years?

The solution is not solar, wind, nor tidal... Its nuclear

What's interesting about Mercury, is that it rotates around it's axis so slowly that you can "outrun" the sunrise, as long as you move faster than ~11 km/h. So it might be possible to create a moving base that always stays in it's twilight, where the surface temperature is somewhat pleasant. (It goes from -173ºC on the night side to 427ºC on the day side.) Dutch author Tais Teng actually wrote an excellent sci-fi novel about this idea (_400 Graden in de Schaduw_, or "400 Degrees in the Shadow"). I don't think it ever has been translated, but it's a big recommend if you ever are in the situation to read it.

It has to be a swarm in order to reorganize for optimization over the variable solar output over time AND in order to dodge solar outbursts and magnetic storms

One of my favourite episodes of Startrek tng is called "Relics" and has a Dyson Sphere in the story. It's such a great episode. It's the one with Scotty (James Doohan) making an appearance.

I wonder if dismantling a planet within a solar system, part of an orchestral orbiting situation of several planets together, might become problematic, or result in strange changes in the solar system.

Astrum: “a dyson sphere could be completed as little as 31 years” Also my city builds a 12 story office building in 5 years

Interesting that nuclear isn’t mentioned. This would solve a lot of our energy problems.

One issue I never see addressed in these types of videos ... increasing the amount of energy arriving at earth should upset the energy balance considerably. Directing near 100% of the sun's energy to earth, even if transformed into something other than sunlight, is still going have to go somewhere. We would have to be able to dramatically increase the amount of energy the earth sheds as well.

150 years of oil reserves? When I was a kid they told us we'd be out in 1982. So, do we have a Illudium Q-36 modulator to blow Mercury away?

One idea that I've thought of (and actually employed in Kerbal Space Program a few times) is to make a giant solar farm on the surface of Mercury and have a massive beam that converts the solar energy into microwaves and beam them to the Moon, then to Earth. A side-effect I could see with that is creating massive invisible beams of death in space. A wandering spacecraft that stumbled into the beam wouldn't have a very good time.

you made a mistake at 6:35. 1km² is 1million m². so 35000 people per 1km² would mean that each person would have 28 square meters, not 3 square centimeters

It's cool to see Alex covering more 'futurist' topics in his style. The optimist in space really suits him, and we need more of that.

My question: what happens to all of the planets beyond the sphere with less or no sunlight (or solar particles) reaching them?

6:36 thats quite the miscalculation man😂

Forget Dyson sphere. Just build two more earth's.

Judging a civilization by how much energy it uses seems like a very flawed metric. Wouldn't an advanced civilization be more efficient, and need less source energy to fuel various technologies? These plans seem to be all brute force and no finesse.

6:38 How on earth did you get that 35k people per km2 means 1 person per 3 cm2? There are one MILLION square metres in a square kilometre. It's actually one person per 28.6 m2.