
Dyson Tree - Petiver
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_tree
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kurthr
Kinda sad that Integral Trees doesn't make the list. Although it doesn't quite
fit the definition... I'd say Niven's was almost certainly a derivative twist
on the same idea.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Integral_Trees](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Integral_Trees)

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tempguy9999
It's at the bottom in the 'see also' section.

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disconcision
the list does miss brin & bedfords 'heart of the comet' though

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novalis78
This is weird. I am sure “Die Terranauten” discussed this topic at length (one
of the main ideas was that a plant based galaxy wide civilization had been one
of the first to ‘conquer’ space). However the series ended in 1981.

[https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Terranauten](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Terranauten)

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scandox
It often seems to me that SF ideas and concepts are treated as mere notions,
whereas the mere notions of scientists are treated as - grander sounding -
hypotheses.

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squirrelicus
It really depends. In the 30s and 40s, many scifi [comic books] were largely
based on well defined and plausible rocket theory. Hollywood though...

I guess the distinction between scientific hypotheses and scifi that extends
beyond well understood science is that you have to have scientifically
rigorous reasons to think the hypothesis might be true. So not mere notions,
e.g. there is no cold fusion reaction hypothesis anymore.

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laser
Relatedly, anyone know of anybody working on genetically modifying trees to
create human-habitats on earth? It’s a fun and crazy concept, but perhaps it’s
still far too technically difficult to approach with current tools.

Imagine planting many acres of genetically-modified trees and coming back in
forty years to the primary structures of thousands of beautiful forest homes
:P

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maxander
As far as I understand it, the mechanisms that trees and other plants use to
make themselves plant-shapes wouldn’t generalize to other useful things like
houses; e.g., the algorithm is something akin to an L-system [0], and there’s
only so much one can do with that.

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-system](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-system)

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fouc
Well you could program a die off of cells, so internals of a tree could
possibly be hollowed out with rooms.

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saalweachter
As an aside, every time one of Dyson's ideas comes up on HN, I have to google,
and so far have always had the same reaction: Holy crap, Freeman Dyson is
_still_ alive.

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arvidkahl
And his ideas successfully manage to blow my mind every single time. They are
so human-centric, yet so vast and exploratory.

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pontifier
I hope he's signed up for cryonics so he'll maybe be able to see his ideas in
action.

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userbinator
Before clicking I thought it was another odd vacuum for gardening
applications, given that there is already a model called the Dyson Animal.

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ComputerGuru
And I thought it was a data structure possibly inspired by the idea of Dyson
spheres.

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416chad
I'm of the same vein, fully thought this was going to be some data structure.

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mrfusion
I’m confused. Wouldn’t it be way too cold to grow anything? And there wouldn’t
be enough sunlight?

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antisthenes
Yes, I'm not exactly sure how this would work.

Trees/plants still respire, so they would need some sort of atmosphere to be
present within the comet. But if it's sealed so that gases don't get out, how
does sunlight get in?

Not to mention that the whole plan goes bottoms up if the comet just happens
to pass close enough and most of it evaporates into space. There goes your
"tree" along with it.

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deathanatos
I was trying to envision this myself, and at some point was wondering if maybe
the comet had some translucent ice, then light could get through and gases
could stay in? Still, if it's cold enough to maintain the ice, I don't see how
a tree is going to have a good time with it.

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kristianp
I read Swanwicks "Vacuum Flowers", but didn't realise the Dyson colonies were
named after a particular idea of Dysons.

I love the idea of a Dyson swarm. Just build some self-replicating factories
on Mercury for building sun-orbiting PV arrays and our energy problems are
solved for the next million years or so! Short-sighted argument against doing
this at[1].

[1]
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/04/03/destroying-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/04/03/destroying-
mercury-to-build-a-dyson-sphere-is-a-bad-idea/)

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taneq
Yeah, that article doesn't make a very strong case against a Dyson swarm. At
least it's been updated with an admission that any remotely sane approach is
practical after all (rather than the assumed "set up a 1-square-km solar
array, in the same orbit as Earth for some reason, and power yourself solely
with that while you dismantle an entire planet and stash it in a warehouse
somewhere before starting to build more solar panels"). Although the second
update shows a continued lack of understanding - who on (or off) Earth would
expect a planetary-scale engineering project to take less than 100 years?!

I've skimmed the follow-up article and I'm not going to read it in depth to
avoid spending the morning shouting at clouds.

Anyway I digress. Self-replicating factories sound great but eventually
they're gonna start evolving no matter how tightly we try and lock them down,
at which point we'd better hope the planet we're living on doesn't look too
much like lunch to them. (I'm picturing the Greenfly mentioned in some
Alistair Reynolds books.)

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antisemiotic
Just remember to remove any baobabs you see, these can get nasty real quick.

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chr1
Would be nice to have a version of this for semi-deserts, a tree that collects
and stores large amount of water during rainy season and then secretes it in
the dry season.

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d6e
Trees in aggregate kind of do this already. Plant enough trees in an area and
you change the local climate.

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noneeeed
Yep. This is one of the reasons the current (and past) burning of the Amazon
(and other forests) is such a problem. Forests like that create their own
climatic systems, and strongly influence the weather on a local or regional
level depending on their size. It's kind of like a bigger version of the
effect you get when urban areas are "greened".

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ianai
It’s more than just that too. Certain types of trees form forests near beaches
and effectively act to pull water inland for other species of trees and
plants. A lot of the things that need to be done (clean, maybe even
desalinate?, water and carbon sequestration) may be done with trees.

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WorldMaker
It's easy to forget how old some genuses of trees are and that in some cases
they did all of this many times before across many epochs of this planet. It
is interesting to wonder what would happen if we just planted a lot more
trees. Replaced some of our asphalted parking lots and flattened single crop
agriculture fields back with forests.

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chr1
Plants did all of these, but they did the minimal amount necessary for them to
survive. We can use existing plants as a huge library to mix and match
behavior to get what we need. Unfortunately "just replacing" won't produce a
very good results, as in many places normal forests won't survive, and in many
other places they won't produce enough food compared ti single crop fields.
But with gene engineering we can change that.

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quickthrower2
There is also
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere).

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HenryBemis
Every time I use a Dyson hand dryer (pretty popular in the UK), I think "Dyson
sphere"!!!!

Star Trek was, what lately has been, TBBT making people love sciences, space,
and dreaming big.

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jmah
For the record, that's a different Dyson. Not to say it won’t trigger the
thought though!

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HenryBemis
How the brain works for non-native speakers.... "Bart" for me will always
bring Bart Simpson in mind first, because the first Bart I got to 'know' is
from thr Simpsons, and my brain has is bound together those two points.

The same applies for the word "Dyson". I may have lunch with a Bob Dyson, but
the word "Dyson" will always bring Star Trek and Dyson sphere in mind :)

