I am bullish on black hole accretion power, but building such as system requires a bunch of nearby stellar Dyson swarms. They are not cheap, even if the payback is big.
8:11 AM · Jun 8, 2026 · 1.1K Views
Futurist Anders Sandberg says black hole power extraction requires constructing multiple expensive stellar Dyson swarms
Danielle Fong will present on Dyson sphere scaling at Manifest
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Users support Anders Sandberg's Dyson swarm idea for black hole power because they see it as feasible and value adding engineering input to refine designs like x-ray absorption.
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Anders Sandberg@anderssandberg
Why supermassive black holes? Accretion disks run hotter for smaller holes, so more energy in X-rays than longer wavelengths. Hard to make photovoltaics for that, and thermal "solar" suffers from the lack of X-ray mirrors. SMBH disks are conveniently cool.
Anders Sandberg@anderssandberg
I am bullish on black hole accretion power, but building such as system requires a bunch of nearby stellar Dyson swarms. They are not cheap, even if the payback is big.
2hViews 410Likes 8Bookmarks 0
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Anders Sandberg@anderssandberg
Now, if somebody could come up with better ways of converting hot blackbody radiation into work it would boost Carnot efficiency nicely. @DanielleFong, would adding sodium to accretion disks work, or would it just get too ionized?
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Danielle Fong 🔆@DanielleFong
@anderssandberg are you going to be at manifest? giving a talk on making dyson sphere across 26 orders of magnitude. i should expand to black holes
Anders Sandberg@anderssandberg
Now, if somebody could come up with better ways of converting hot blackbody radiation into work it would boost Carnot efficiency nicely. @DanielleFong, would adding sodium to accretion disks work, or would it just get too ionized?
1hViews 38Likes 4Bookmarks 0
Anders Sandberg@anderssandberg
@DanielleFong I have to be on this side of the Atlantic. Happy to give you notes on my big Dysons (I think it is good if an engineer is involved in stuff like this...)
Danielle Fong 🔆@DanielleFong
@anderssandberg are you going to be at manifest? giving a talk on making dyson sphere across 26 orders of magnitude. i should expand to black holes
1hViews 44Likes 2Bookmarks 0
Danielle Fong 🔆@DanielleFong
@anderssandberg i think it can work, but you can also try to absorb xrays etc emitted from poles
Danielle Fong 🔆@DanielleFong
@anderssandberg are you going to be at manifest? giving a talk on making dyson sphere across 26 orders of magnitude. i should expand to black holes
1hViews 24Likes 1Bookmarks 0