Dyson sphere n.

an artificial structure in the form of a hollow shell surrounding a star, built esp. in order to capture the star’s energy output

SF Encyclopedia


  • 1966 P. Fern tr. I. S. Shklovskii & C. Sagan Intelligent Life in the Universe 472 page image Carl Sagan

    How thick would the shell of a Dyson sphere be? [Ibid. 473] An extraplanetary civilization surrounded by a Dyson sphere would be a very powerful source of infrared radiation.

  • 1970 L. Niven Ringworld 105 Larry Niven bibliography

    The Ringworld is a compromise, an engineering compromise between a Dyson sphere and a normal planet. Dyson was one of the ancient natural philosophers, pre-Belt, almost pre-atomic. He pointed out that a civilization is limited by the energy available to it. The way for the human race to use all the energy within its reach, he said, is to build a spherical shell around the sun and trap every ray of sunlight.

  • 1970 L. Niven Ringworld 106 Larry Niven bibliography

    But there’s more to a Dyson sphere than collecting solar power. Say you make the sphere one astronomical unit in radius. You've got to clear out the solar system anyway, so you use all the solar planets in the construction. That gives you a shell of, say, chrome steel a few yards thick. Now you put gravity generators all over the shell. You'd have a surface area a billion times as big as the Earth’s surface. A trillion people could wander all their lives without ever meeting one another.

  • 1978 G. Eklund Starless World v. 19 Gordon Eklund bibliography

    I thought that’s where you might be heading. A Dyson sphere.

  • 1986 J. Gunn Readers of Hard Science Fiction in G. E. Slusser & E. S. Rabkin Hard Science Fiction 78 James E. Gunn bibliography

    Bob Shaw’s Orbitsville, which also was based on Dyson’s speculations about advanced civilizations converting planetary matter into a sphere about a sun and utilizing all that star’s energy and all the converted planet’s area as living space was not as spectacularly popular as Ringworld but kept the concept of the Dyson sphere at the center of the novel.

  • 1993 Science Fiction Age Jan. 20/3

    The same episode will also feature breath-taking footage of the Dyson Sphere, an effect meant to replicate a device two hundred million miles in diameter that was built around the sun of a now vanished alien race.

  • 1998 G. Zebrowski Afterword in C. Pellegrino & G. Zebrowski Star Trek: Next Generation: Dyson Sphere (1999) 201 George Zebrowski

    One must think about the physical possibilities of a Dyson Sphere habitat, to the point where one can see the implications for life on the inner surface.

  • 1998 C. Pellegrino & G. Zebrowski Star Trek Next Generation: Dyson Sphere xii. 189 George Zebrowski Charles Pellegrino bibliography

    For the first time, the Dyson sphere really did look like a planet. It was as small as Earth now, and growing smaller with each passing second. The instruments suggested that it did not exist at all, except visually.

  • 2004 P. F. Hamilton Pandora’s Star xxii. 722 Peter F. Hamilton bibliography

    Why anyone would create such an artefact in the first place was beyond him. It lacked the practicality of a Dyson sphere or a Niven ring.

  • 2006 N. Asher Polity Agent i. 34 Neal Asher bibliography

    This particular fragment of the nascent, fully enclosing Dyson sphere was diamond-shaped, 160,000 miles long and 100,000 wide.

Research requirements

antedating 1966
Research History
Mike Christie found a citation in a 1984 printing of Larry Niven's "Ringworld". Brian Ameringen subsequently verified the cite in the 1970 first edition.
Sue Surova contributed various cites from 1996-2002.
Bill Mullins submitted a 1966 cite from I.S. Shklovskii and Carl Sagan's "Intelligent Life in the Universe".

Michael Simons provided a link to the Dyson sphere FAQ, which mentions Freeman Dyson's article "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation" in 1959 in Science as the original source. Jeff Prucher located a copy of this article and found that the term "Dyson sphere" does not appear there, nor does it appear in the correspondence that subsequently appeared in the letter column of the magazine.

Last modified 2023-03-29 09:53:40
In the compilation of some entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries in OED.