Freeman Dyson's Vision of the Future

Theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson, creator of the 'Dyson Sphere' idea, pioneered fascinating concepts about the future of humanity and intelligent life.

Professor Freeman J. Dyson has been discussing mind-boggling concepts in a calm, matter-of-fact, one-should-expect way since 1956. 'One should expect that within a few thousand years of its entering the stage of industrial development, any intelligent species should be found occupying an artificial biosphere which completely surrounds its parent star.' It is his hobby he says disarmingly, something that grew up alongside his career as one of the finest mathematical physicists of the last century. To his former colleagues at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies, Dyson was known for his understanding of what goes on in the core of a star or in the interaction of high-energy beams of subnuclear particles—contributions that earned him the American Institute of Physics' Heineman Prize and the Royal Society's Hughes Medal.

To a wider circle Dyson is known for imagining an artificial biosphere. It is an environment that encloses a solar system's sun, harnessing all of the energy produced by the sun, called the 'Dyson Sphere' (a term Dyson opposes) by science fiction authors. It is a vast structure built by dismantling a Jupiter-sized planet and using the raw material to provide living area millions of times greater than that of any planet. Larry Niven's Ringworld describes a structure inspired by the Dyson Sphere, albeit on a much smaller scale. The proposed structure would require an advanced civilization that views modern society like humanity views the neanderthal's. They would have the power to move suns, and create planets, but technological limitations do not hinder Dyson's innovative imagination, an imagination powered by scientific realism.He further suggested that the powerful gravitational field of a white-dwarf binary star might serve as a super-slingshot to accelerate interstellar voyagers free of fuel costs and that an army of self-reproducing robots could mine the ice of Saturn's moons and use it to make chill, arid Mars a garden planet.

Image via Dice Haven

Dyson has also proposed the creation of a genetically-engineered plant capable of growing on a comet. He suggested that comets could be engineered to contain hollow spaces filled with a breathable atmosphere, thus providing self-sustaining habitats for humanity in the outer solar system. The theoretician sees no reason why plants could not be genetically engineered to grow their own greenhouses, just as turtles grow shells. 'The greenhouse would consist of a thick skin providing thermal insulation, with small transparent windows to admit sunlight. Outside the skin would be an array of simple lenses, focusing sunlight through the windows into the interior. Groups of greenhouses could grow together to form extended habitats for other species of plants and animals.'

Building Rockets and Bombs

Image via Dark Roasted Blend

 

Dyson's speculative side lay dormant until 1956 when he met physicist and bomb designer Ted Taylor at a series of conferences convened by the General Atomic Co. in San Diego. They worked together on the fail-safe design of the TRIGA research reactor, and on Project Orion—a plan to propel spacecraft far larger than Apollo (even the size of a city!) by detonating nuclear or thermonuclear bombs behind a "pusher plate." Since then, the two men have been close friends, stimulating each other in imaginative synergy. Dyson also has worked for the U.S. Disarmament Agency, served as consultant to NASA and the Department of Defense, and is a former chairman of the Federation of American Scientists.
Conversing with Dyson leaves one slightly breathless as he jumps from details of a rockets that might be launched tomorrow to the outlook for the next ten billion years of evolution. After a while, one begins to sort out what he says by how he begins each sentence. "It's inevitable . . . " signifies his certainty about the next century or two. "It seems obvious .. . " enlarges the scope to the future of mankind on the earth, and "One should expect. .. " can reach from the Big Bang to the end of the cosmos.

Image via 13 Dimension

Freeman Dyson was born in Crowthorne, England, in 1923. He attended a public school in Winchester where his father was a teacher, entering Cambridge during World War II. After two years of service with the RAF's bomber command, he took a B.A. in mathematics (his specialty was number theory). Dyson came to the United States in 1947, after a few years at Cambridge and the University of Birmingham. At Cornell, he was drawn from mathematics into physics by the influence of Richard Feynman and Hans Bethe.
Dyson now is 92 years old, a small, compact man with sharp features frequently softened by a half-smile. When the smile breaks into laughter, which is often, the laugh is that of a hearty, delighted young man, and it seems almost too large for its owner. However much he may deprecate his 'hobby,' Dyson clearly enjoys it— as well as the reactions of his more staid colleagues. While he may have retired, his unique ability to peer into possible futures is as sharp as his features. Dyson's legacy not only thrives in the scientific community but inspires the realm of science fiction, and will continue to do so until his theoretical technologies are realized by a post-human civilization.