# Dyson Sphere

Explore the Dyson sphere—a visionary megastructure designed to harness a star’s energy, reflecting humanity’s potential to transcend planetary limits and advance civilization.

[Image: A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star to capture a large percentage of its power output.]

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical structure built around a star to capture most of its light. First proposed by theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson in 1960, the concept originated as a thought experiment on how an advanced, energy-hungry civilization might meet its power needs. Dyson suggested that such a civilization could build a massive array of solar collectors around its host star. Because this structure would absorb the star's visible light and re-radiate it as waste heat, Dyson argued that astronomers could search for these civilizations by looking for unusually bright, artificial infrared signals in the galaxy.

Read quickly, the idea recalls Babel, whose builders said, "let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name" (Genesis 11:4). Interpreters have long identified the tower with the stepped temple-towers of Mesopotamia, whose names presented them as links between heaven and earth. Unlike the ark and the tabernacle, whose patterns God revealed, Babel was a temple of human design. Read that way, enclosing a star would repeat Babel's pride on a larger scale. Yet Restoration scripture describes divine beings who organize worlds out of existing materials, and it judges that work by its purpose.

## A Star's Worth of Light

The sun puts out far more energy than Earth receives or humanity uses, and a Dyson sphere names the attempt to gather a large share of it. Earth intercepts roughly one two-billionth of the sun's output, and even that fraction is about nine thousand times the energy humanity now uses, an average of about twenty trillion watts. An energy scale proposed four years after Dyson's paper ranks civilizations by the power they command: the first type uses the energy available on its planet, and the second uses the entire output of its star. No present technology comes near the task. Scripture has its own account of work on that scale, and it too begins with materials.

## Organizing Matter

In the Book of Abraham, one "like unto God" tells his companions, "We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell" (Abraham 3:24). Babel's builders meant to climb up and make a name, and the Lord came down to see their tower; Abraham's council goes down to make a place where others may live. It is significant that the genealogy following Babel traces the line of Shem, whose name in Hebrew means "name," down to Abraham, to whom God promises the great name the builders tried to make for themselves. Modern revelation places Christ's own light in the sun, "and the light of the sun, and the power thereof by which it was made" (D&C 88:7). Enoch told the Lord that "millions of earths like this" would "not be a beginning to the number of thy creations" (Moses 7:30), and the Lord told Moses that "there is no end to my works" (Moses 1:38). Mormon transhumanists read these texts as inviting human beings into that work as co-creators, with science and technology among the means God has ordained.

## Searching the Heavens

[Image: Astronomers have searched for Dyson-sphere–like signatures by looking for unexplained infrared glow, but dust-shrouded galaxies can also produce excess infrared light.]

Moses' vision moves outward from this earth and its inhabitants to worlds of which "there are many that now stand, and innumerable are they unto man" (Moses 1:35). A 2024 search of about five million stars for unexplained infrared glow flagged seven candidates, and a response the same year argued that dust-shrouded galaxies behind the stars probably account for the excess light. Earlier, speculation about a megastructure around a star nicknamed Tabby's star faded when its dimming proved to vary with wavelength, as fine dust would cause. A Mormon transhumanist argument reasons that civilizations able to survive their own growing power would probably have become more compassionate than we are, and that one such civilization probably created our world. On that view, the absence of visible megastructures says little about whether creators exist.

## What the Builders Would Need

A project that gathers a star's light would require builders whose character had grown in step with their power. Some futurists have proposed dismantling Mercury to supply the material for a swarm. Turning barren rock into collectors and habitats follows the pattern of Abraham's council, which took raw materials and made a place to dwell. Pressed further, the same logic could treat any planet or moon as feedstock, including worlds that hold life or could. Isaiah describes a God who "created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited" (Isaiah 45:18). Whoever controlled a star's output would also hold unmatched power over everyone who depended on it.

## Cosmic Engineering

While building a Dyson swarm or solid sphere lies far beyond current engineering, the core principle remains immediately relevant: intelligence must learn to capture and steward energy without destroying its environment. Transitioning from planetary confinement to stellar stewardship represents a crucial threshold in avoiding existential bottlenecks. By viewing stars not merely as distant celestial lights but as sources of life-sustaining power given for human flourishing, transhumanist theology connects present environmental responsibility with the distant, sacred task of cosmic engineering.

*See also*: [Kardashev Types](/topical-guide/kardashev-types), [Posthuman](/topical-guide/posthuman), [Solarpunk](/topical-guide/solarpunk), [Technological Singularity](/topical-guide/technological-singularity), [Transhumanism](/topical-guide/transhumanism), [Universal Basic Income](/topical-guide/universal-basic-income), [Uploading](/topical-guide/uploading)