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| − | ==Target for a Lunar Telescope==
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| − | :If at some future time an infrared telescope is placed on Luna, it might be located at 85 degrees either north or south latitude. It should be at the point that is furthest from Earth at that latitude. At such a spot the sun is never more than 6.5 degrees above the horizon as it shines from the direction of the equator, and Earth's disk only partially peeks over the pole once a month. So, it would require only a low wall to prevent these sources from interfering with the telescope. | |
| − | :A potential target would be a Dyson sphere. This is the hypothetical effect of an advanced civilization capturing all of the radiant energy of its star and reradiating it in the infrared after using the energy. Some people have misrepresented this concept as a rotating solid sphere held up by a combination of centrifugal and ridged body forces, but Freeman Dyson himself referred to a swarm of objects which would orbit a star each in an independent orbit and each capturing the stars energy when it is not shaded by another object in the swarm.
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| − | :An alternative for the ridged body shell is to have a nonrotating shell held up by rails that move through tubular chambers in the ridged shell to circle the star at superorbital speed. The shell would then be held up by magnetic attraction to the rails. If humanity were to become technically competent to build such a thing and for some reason driven to do it building a shell at a distance of one astronomical unit from the sun, the shell would be held up against the six-ten-thousandths of a g that the sun exerts at that distance. Large areas of solar cells might be only a couple of millimeters thick while living spaces would include ten meter thick shielding and internal centrifuges to produce artificial gravity.
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| − | :Whenever one finds a silly idea attributed to a famous person such as Freeman Dyson, one should suspect that the idea may be a misrepresentation, and check exactly what the famous person said.
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