capable of harvesting every bit of the Sun's energy?

Something known as a Dyson sphere.

This is WHAT IF,

and here's what would happen

if we could build a Dyson sphere

around the Sun.

The idea of a Dyson sphere was...

well, stolen from aliens.

In 1960, astrophysicist Freeman Dyson theorized another civilization

that found a way to meet their ever-increasing energy and space demands.

They rearranged their solar system.

This hypothetical advanced civilization built a hollow sphere around their own sun,

and provided themselves with an incredible amount of energy

and habitable real estate.

How would we go about building this space-level structure?

Theoretically, if we built a Dyson sphere,

we'd have access to a colossal 400 septillion watts of solar energy.

That's a trillion times more power than our entire civilization consumes today.

The problem is, no known material is strong enough

to handle all the space radiation.

And even if we created one in very large quantities,

a tiny gravitational pull towards the Sun would make our solid sphere uninhabitable.

Not to mention that it would be totally unstable.

Every meteor strike would push a part of the sphere toward the star.

But all these issues can be solved with a simple adjustment.

Instead of building a solid Dyson sphere,

we could build a Dyson swarm.

A myriad of solar collectors with their individual orbits around the Sun.

Let's start with a small station.

One that's able to provide the energy needed for this construction project.

We'd begin on Mercury.

It would become our space mine for the iron and oxygen we'd need.

From those elements, we'd make highly reflective solar collectors.

The giant mirrors would reflect light into a small solar power plant.

From there, it would beam the energy to where we need it.

We'd probably demolish Mercury entirely

before we moved on to Venus, Mars and the outer planets.

Even nearby asteroids would be decimated.

However, even just deconstructing Mercury

would supply us with enough energy to power up our supercomputers,

and boost interstellar exploration.

Maybe we'd even build Earth-like oases -

large rotating space colonies in the habitable zone of our Solar System.

Maybe, if we were lucky, we'd find other, more efficient sources of energy

to help us master space travel.

Like artificially generated black holes.

But that's a story for another WHAT IF.