Closed ecological systems or contained ecological systems ( CES ) are ecosystems that do not rely on matter exchange with any part outside the system.
24-692: Biodome may refer to: a closed ecological system Bio-Dome , a 1996 movie starring Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin and directed by Jason Bloom. the Montreal Biodome , a facility located in Montreal that allows visitors to walk through replicas of four ecosystems found in the Americas. the Montreal Biosphère , a geodesic dome on Ile Sainte-Hélène in Montreal, Quebec, Canada used as
48-546: A Dyson swarm ; however, in 2013, Dyson said he had come to regret that the concept had been named after him. Dyson-style energy collectors around a distant star would absorb and re-radiate energy from the star. The wavelengths of such re-radiated energy may be atypical for the star's spectral type , due to the presence of heavy elements not naturally occurring within the star. If the percentage of such atypical wavelengths were to be significant, an alien megastructure could be detected at interstellar distances. This could indicate
72-665: A life-support system ]] or space habitats . In a closed ecological system, any waste products produced by one species must be used by at least one other species. If the purpose is to maintain a life form, such as a mouse or a human , waste products such as carbon dioxide , feces and urine must eventually be converted into oxygen , food , and water . A closed ecological system must contain at least one autotrophic organism. While both chemotrophic and phototrophic organisms are plausible, almost all closed ecological systems to date are based on an autotroph such as green algae . A closed ecological system for an entire planet
96-428: A continuous shell around the star in question, although Dyson himself considered that prospect to be mechanically implausible. They are sometimes used as the type of plot device known as a Big Dumb Object . Dyson spheres appear as a background element in many works of fiction, including the 1964 novel The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber where aliens enclose multiple stars in this way. Dyson spheres are depicted in
120-431: A system could be constructed, simply referring to it in the paper as a "shell" or " biosphere ". He later clarified that he did not have in mind a solid structure, saying: "A solid shell or ring surrounding a star is mechanically impossible. The form of 'biosphere' which I envisaged consists of a loose collection or swarm of objects traveling on independent orbits around the star." Such a concept has often been referred to as
144-505: A thousand light-years of Earth – are M-dwarfs , a class of stars that are smaller and less luminous than the Sun. However, the authors of the findings were careful not to make any overblown claims. Despite this, many media outlets picked up on the story. Less fantastical alternative explanations have been made, including a proposal that the infrared from the discoveries was caused by distant dust-obscured galaxies. A precursor to
168-509: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This space - or spaceflight -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Dyson Sphere A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output . The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to imagine how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy requirements once those requirements exceed what can be generated from
192-809: Is called an ecosphere . Man-made closed ecological systems which were created to sustain human life include Biosphere 2 , MELiSSA , and the BIOS-1, BIOS-2, and BIOS-3 projects. Bottle gardens and aquarium ecospheres are partially or fully enclosed glass containers that are self-sustaining closed ecosystems that can be made or purchased. They can include tiny shrimp , algae , gravel , decorative shells , and Gorgonia . Closed ecological systems are commonly featured in fiction and particularly in science fiction . These include domed cities , space stations and habitats on foreign planets or asteroids , cylindrical habitats (e.g. O'Neill cylinders ), Dyson Spheres and so on. This ecology -related article
216-528: Is to extract useful energy from a star, sometimes for specific purposes. For example, Matrioshka brains have been proposed to extract energy for computation, while Shkadov thrusters would extract energy for propulsion. Some proposed stellar engine designs are based on the Dyson sphere. From May until June 2024, speculation grew that potential signs of interstellar Dyson spheres had been discovered. The seven objects of interest – all located within
240-534: The 1975–1983 book series Saga of Cuckoo by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson , and one functions as the setting of Bob Shaw 's 1975 novel Orbitsville and its sequels. In the 1992 episode " Relics " of the TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation , the USS ; Enterprise finds itself trapped in an abandoned Dyson Sphere; in a 2011 interview, Dyson said that he enjoyed the episode, although he considered
264-647: The Dyson Sphere concept include a single circular band in Larry Niven 's 1970 novel Ringworld , a half sphere in the 2012 novel Bowl of Heaven by Gregory Benford and Niven, and nested spheres – also known as a Matrioshka brain – in Colin Kapp 's 1980s Cageworld series and Brian Stableford 's 1979–1990 Asgard trilogy . Stableford himself observed that Dyson spheres are usually MacGuffins or largely deep in
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#1732780942758288-494: The Sun is currently far beyond humanity's engineering capacity. The number of craft required to obtain, transmit, and maintain a complete Dyson sphere exceeds present-day industrial capabilities. George Dvorsky has advocated the use of self-replicating robots to overcome this limitation in the relatively near term. Some have suggested that Dyson sphere habitats could be built around white dwarfs and even pulsars . Stellar engines are hypothetical megastructures whose purpose
312-421: The backgrounds of stories, giving as examples Fritz Leiber 's The Wanderer and Linda Nagata 's Deception Well , whereas stories involving space exploration tend to employ the variants like Niven's Ringworld. He gives two reasons for this: firstly that Dyson spheres are simply too big to address, which Friedman also alluded to when pointing out that the reason his novelization of "Relics" did not go further into
336-427: The concept of Dyson spheres was featured in the 1937 novel Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon , in which he described "every solar system... surrounded by a gauze of light-traps, which focused the escaping solar energy for intelligent use"; Dyson got his inspiration from this book and suggested that "Stapledon sphere" would be a more apt name for the concept. Fictional Dyson spheres are typically solid structures forming
360-582: The energy requirements of an advanced technological civilization increased, there would come a time when it would need to systematically harvest the energy from its local star on a large scale. He speculated that this could be done via a system of structures orbiting the star, designed to intercept and collect its energy. He argued that as the structure would result in the large-scale conversion of starlight into far-infrared radiation, an earth-based search for sources of infrared radiation could identify stars supporting intelligent life. Dyson did not detail how such
384-553: The home planet's resources alone. Because only a tiny fraction of a star's energy emissions reaches the surface of any orbiting planet , building structures encircling a star would enable a civilization to harvest far more energy. The first modern imagining of such a structure was by Olaf Stapledon in his science fiction novel Star Maker (1937). The concept was later explored by the physicist Freeman Dyson in his 1960 paper "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation ". Dyson speculated that such structures would be
408-478: The link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Biodome&oldid=868257151 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Closed ecological system The term is most often used to describe small, man-made ecosystems. Such systems can potentially serve as
432-476: The logical consequence of the escalating energy needs of a technological civilization and would be a necessity for its long-term survival. A signature of such spheres detected in astronomical searches would be an indicator of extraterrestrial intelligence . Since Dyson's paper, many variant designs involving an artificial structure or series of structures to encompass a star have been proposed in exploratory engineering or described in science fiction , often under
456-513: The name "Dyson sphere". Fictional depictions often describe a solid shell of matter enclosing a star – an arrangement considered by Dyson himself to be impossible. Inspired by the 1937 science fiction novel Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon , the physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson was the first to formalize the concept of what became known as the "Dyson sphere" in his 1960 Science paper "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infra-Red Radiation". Dyson theorized that as
480-576: The pavilion for the 1967 World Exhibition Expo 67. Biosphere 2 , an artificial closed ecosystem in Oracle, Arizona. BIOS-3 , a closed ecosystem at the Institute of Biophysics in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Biodome . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change
504-489: The presence of what has been called a Type II Kardashev civilization . SETI has looked for such infrared-heavy spectra from solar analogs , as has Fermilab . Fermilab discovered 17 potential "ambiguous" candidates, of which four were in 2006 called "amusing but still questionable". Later searches also resulted in several candidates, all of which remain unconfirmed. On 14 October 2015, Planet Hunters ' citizen scientists discovered unusual light fluctuations of
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#1732780942758528-576: The sphere depicted to be "nonsense". Michael Jan Friedman who wrote the novelization observed that in the TV episode itself the Dyson sphere was effectively a MacGuffin , with "just nothing about it" in the story, and decided to flesh out the plot element in his novelization. Other science-fiction story examples include Tony Rothman 's The World Is Round , Somtow Sucharitkul 's Inquisitor series, Timothy Zahn 's Spinneret , James White 's Federation World , Stephen Baxter 's The Time Ships , and Peter F. Hamilton 's Pandora's Star . Variations on
552-438: The sphere was that it was only four hundred pages and he had just shy of four weeks to write it; and secondly that, especially for hard science-fiction, Dyson spheres have certain engineering problems that complicate stories. In particular, since gravitational attraction is in equilibrium inside such a sphere (per the shell theorem ), other means such as rotating the sphere have to be employed in order to keep things attached to
576-428: The star KIC 8462852 raising press speculation that a Dyson sphere may have been discovered. However, subsequent analysis showed that the results were consistent with the presence of dust. A further campaign in 2024 identified seven possible candidates for Dyson-spheres, but further investigation was said to be required. Although Dyson sphere systems are theoretically possible, building a stable megastructure around
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