Dyson Sphere

As some of you know I'm working on a scifi novel called NO REST, hence my choice of subject matter for the A-Z blogfest. Among the many things I've learned about is the Kardashev scale which measures a civilization's technological advancement.

Type I is pretty much where we are and where we'll probably be for a very long time. Guillermo A. Lemarchand stated this as "A level near contemporary terrestrial civilization with an energy capability equivalent to the solar insolation on earth, between 10¹⁶ and 10 ¹⁷Watts."

A Type II civ is able to harness the energy radiated by its own star, for example by building a Dyson sphere (I know, you wondering when I was going to get to the title of my post, wern't you?), a hypothetical megastructure originally described by Freeman Dyson.^* Such a "sphere" would be a system of orbiting solar-power satallites meant to completely encompass a star and capture most or all of its energy output. 

As for a Type III, a civ of this type would be have access to the power comparable to the luminosity of the entire Milky Way galaxy, about 4 x 10³⁷Watts. Yikes.



* Freeman Dyson is a British-born American, theoretical physicist, and mathematician, who is famous for his work in quantum electrodynamics, solid-state physics, astronomy, and nuclear engineering.