
Freeman Dyson Has Died - ChickeNES
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/28/science/freeman-dyson-dead.html
======
astrophysician
About 4 years ago, I was a grad student in astrophysics at Princeton. Dyson
worked at the Institute for Advanced Study which, while not _officially_ part
of the university was essentially an extension of the various departments
(shared colloquiums, any researcher there was a valid thesis adviser, etc.).

The grad students have a tradition (or used to) called “Thunch” (Thursday
Lunch) where they invite someone to come have lunch and hang out every week.
It was by far one of the highlights of my life — maybe 10 people in the room
max, eating pizza, shooting shit with some of the most impressive and
accomplished people you could hope to meet — Nobel prize laureates, Neil
deGrasse Tyson, famous authors, whoever would respond to our invitation
(people tended to say yes). Dyson was one of them. At the time he was already
like 92 years old, dressed in a suit, occasionally using a handkerchief, and
this guy had just published a result in Nature. The guy was SHARP at 92.
Nicest, most interesting person I have ever met. Knew Einstein from his early
days at IAS. Worked on an early version of the space program that looked into
launching people into space with large spring loaded contraptions _that were
to be propelled with nuclear weapons_. Those were the days I guess...

So sorry to see he’s gone, the guy was a living legend.

~~~
gbronner
I've met him and his other daughter. They are/were wonderful people.

There were a lot of "solutions" using nuclear weapons looking for a problem.
There was a proposal to blow a new canal through nicaragua, to blast harbors
into Alaska, etc. My roommate's father showed me his paper that anticipated
fracking: drill a deep well in oil shale, through a small nuclear weapon in
the bottom, blow it up and watch as the pressure and heat extract the oil and
have it flow through the fractured rock back to your oil well.

He almost got to test it.

~~~
bori5
In a similar vein there’s a story and YouTube video of Russians plugging an
out of control burning oil well with a small nuke.

Edit. It was a gas well here’s the link
[https://youtu.be/S57Xq03njsc](https://youtu.be/S57Xq03njsc)

~~~
bori5
RIP Freeman Dyson. Apologies for drifting from main thread, fell for the
oldest trick in the HN book.

------
rtrunck
“It is remarkable that mind enters into our awareness of nature on two
separate levels. At the highest level, the level of human consciousness, our
minds are somehow directly aware of the complicated flow of electrical and
chemical patterns in our brains. At the lowest level, the level of single
atoms and electrons, the mind of an observer is again involved in the
description of events. Between lies the level of molecular biology, where
mechanical models are adequate and mind appears to be irrelevant. But I, as a
physicist, cannot help suspecting that there is a logical connection between
the two ways in which mind appears in my universe. I cannot help thinking that
our awareness of our own brains has something to do with the process which we
call "observation" in atomic physics. That is to say, I think our
consciousness is not just a passive epiphenomenon carried along by the
chemical events in our brains, but is an active agent forcing the molecular
complexes to make choices between one quantum state and another. In other
words, mind is already inherent in every electron, and the processes of human
consciousness differ only in degree but not in kind from the processes of
choice between quantum states which we call "chance" when they are made by
electrons.” ― Freeman Dyson

~~~
josephpmay
That quote is mindblowing. I don't think I've ever heard an argument for free
will on a sub-atomic level. It never crossed my mind that that was a position
someone could conceivably hold. But it's weirdly comforting- it almost feels
religious- and I'm now thinking about how that would affect emergence.

~~~
jes5199
I don't know where I first heard that view, but I've long thought it was the
only one that was plausible - where else could free will come from? is it
supposed to sneak into physics somehow at a higher level?

~~~
whatshisface
Another plausible view is that it never sneaks in. Nondeterminism would only
lead to free will if the mind somehow controlled the nondeterministic
outcomes. We know the brain can't do that, so it's clearly a metaphysical
question if you want to go further (the mind would have to be an agent
distinct from the brain.) The answer to a metaphysical question is not always
"no," but you will never be able to prove it.

~~~
fancyfredbot
I don't get this argument. If your mind deterministically makes a given
decision in a given circumstance then that's what your mind decided to do.
Another mind would make a different decision. That seems like your mind
determined the outcome and that sounds like free will?

~~~
jeremyjh
The decision is the result of mechanical interactions of the atoms your brain
is made of. Unless the mind controls the atoms it’s simply a projection of
them. A lot of people are uncomfortable with that idea, but this discomfort is
also only a projection and the atoms don’t give a damn about it. Where is the
freedom exactly?

~~~
fancyfredbot
I guess I think the atoms are the mind so if the atoms make the decision the
mind makes the decision.

------
melling
Started writing "later” in life:

“Life begins at 55, the age at which I published my first book,” he wrote in
“From Eros to Gaia,”

Never got his PhD. Taught physics at Cornell.

Thoughts on climate change:

"Relishing the role of iconoclast, he confounded the scientific establishment
by dismissing the consensus about the perils of man-made climate change as
“tribal group-thinking.” He doubted the veracity of the climate models, and he
exasperated experts with sanguine predictions they found rooted less in
science than in wishfulness: Excess carbon in the air is good for plants, and
global warming might forestall another ice age."

Lots worth reading in the NYT obituary.

~~~
m0zg
>> Excess carbon in the air is good for plants, and global warming might
forestall another ice age.

How is it not "rooted in science" that excess carbon is good for plants? We're
already seeing significant global greening, and yields are up. Excess CO2 also
reduces the amount of water the plants need.

~~~
djsumdog
He's gone, so this isn't really the place for this discussion at all.

However, I'm glad this is mentioned and how it shows that there are a lot of
intelligent people who have concerns with the current science debate.
Consensus isn't science, it's politics, and challenging ones ideas is how we
both reinforce the truth as well as dispel myths.

~~~
speedgeek
There is a prize winning physicist in my area who was arrested for starting a
major brush fire. He plugged multiple extension cords together to power an
electric fence and the overheating of the cords started the fire. Intelligence
does not apply to every possible topic. Trusting the consensus of people
trained in an area is always better than discounting that consensus because
someone with little to no expertise on the subject challenges their ideas.

~~~
m0zg
> Trusting the consensus of people trained in an area is always better

That's what they said when Galileo Galilei was on trial for not trusting the
"consensus" about geocentric view of the world.

To use a more recent example, that's what they said of Dr. Barry Marshall who
discovered that it was Heliobacter Pylori, and not "stress" that's causing
ulcers in the stomach. Dude was very nearly laughed out of his field, to the
point where he had to take the unconventional step of infecting himself with
h. pylori to prove the point, and then curing himself of it with antibiotics.

In a politicized field especially, it can very easily cost one their
scientific career if they "disagree with consensus" if one is less prominent
than Dyson, whereas "agreeing with consensus" is strongly beneficial.

~~~
AQuantized
I think you'll find those people were actually trained in their respective
fields and not fielding essentially uneducated opinions, however.

------
kkwteh
_I particularly enjoyed being immersed in the ethos of engineering, which is
very different from the ethos of science. A good scientist is a person with
original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with
as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering._

Dyson said this while describing his time working on the Orion project. It had
a profound effect on me and it has always stuck with me.

------
hirundo
"When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by
the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the
superficiality of our theories"

"We have no reason to think that climate change is harmful if you look at the
world as a whole. Most places, in fact, are better off being warmer than being
colder. And historically, the really bad times for the environment and for
people have been the cold periods rather than the warm periods."

"...the computer models are very good at solving equations of fluid dynamics
but very bad at describing the real world. The real world is full of things
like clouds and vegetation and soil and dust which the models describe very
poorly."

[https://www.azquotes.com/author/4275-Freeman_Dyson/tag/clima...](https://www.azquotes.com/author/4275-Freeman_Dyson/tag/climate-
change)

~~~
b0sk
the ridiculously hot summers in Australasia resulting in bushfires, famine and
drought... seas taking over the cities are all _demonstrable_ effects of
climate change.

Did he live in UK? Yea the winter was milder I guess.

~~~
DoreenMichele
There are plant species that are dependent upon fire for reproduction. Such
species begin to die if all fire is suppressed.

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

[https://www.gardenguides.com/97493-eucalyptus-trees-
australi...](https://www.gardenguides.com/97493-eucalyptus-trees-
australia.html)

[https://www.bushheritage.org.au/species/grass-
trees](https://www.bushheritage.org.au/species/grass-trees)

[https://www.nationalforests.org/our-forests/your-national-
fo...](https://www.nationalforests.org/our-forests/your-national-forests-
magazine/how-trees-survive-and-thrive-after-a-fire)

[https://www.quora.com/What-seeds-need-fire-to-germinate-
like...](https://www.quora.com/What-seeds-need-fire-to-germinate-like-a-
forest-fire)

[https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/why-the-giant-
sequoia-n...](https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/why-the-giant-sequoia-
needs-fire-to-grow)

When the Iraqis set the Kuwait oil wells on fire as they left, it was
predicted that they would burn for years and be a global environmental
disaster. They were put out in six months. This was never celebrated. The news
just moved on to something with more drama.

In the aftermath of the fires, the combination of ash and water used to put
many of them out caused the desert to bloom like no one had seen in at least
twenty years. This also was not widely promoted as some kind of good news.

When I was pursuing environmental studies, there was a cartoon in one of my
textbooks depicting microbes giving off oxygen and some of the microbes
protesting that they were destroying their environment and needed to stop.
Microbes that off-gassed oxygen are how we got an oxygen atmosphere on earth.

One of my professors once said "We're like fleas on the butt of a dog trying
to figure out which way the dog is going."

The truth is we don't really know as much as some people like to pretend we do
and we do present stories in a biased fashion. The people who are convinced we
are hurtling towards our doom generally don't want to have a rational
discussion of the evidence. They are too busy trying to insist that our lives
are in imminent danger and there's no time for rational discussion, we must
_do_ something to stop this.

~~~
oska
> When I was pursuing environmental studies, there was a cartoon in one of my
> textbooks depicting microbes giving off oxygen and some of the microbes
> protesting that they were destroying their environment and needed to stop.
> Microbes that off-gassed oxygen are how we got an oxygen atmosphere on
> earth.

Yes, that is called the Great Oxidation Event [1] and it was the Earth's first
major extinction event.

The microbes were absolutely correct that their environment was being
destroyed. The Earth then shifted to a new atmospheric makeup and new life
blossomed but it was still a termination event for most life that existed
prior to the event.

> The truth is we don't really know as much as some people like to pretend we
> do

Yes. Which means we shouldn't run a giant experiment with the atmosphere and
the oceans. This is called the precautionary principle: if you're doing
something that _may_ result in systemic disaster then it's better to not do
it. People who say that this giant global experiment won't do any harm (or go
further and say it will be beneficial) are pretending knowledge that they
don't actually have.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event)

~~~
DoreenMichele
Thank you for the link to The Great Oxidation Event and for the name of it.
Have an upvote for that perfectly chromulent information.

------
dr_dshiv
A few years ago, I asked Freeman Dyson what we should teach our children so
there would be more Freeman Dyson's. He gave a surprising answer.

He said we should teach children to genetically "play" with plants. He thought
we needed that kind of creativity as a human species if we would ever be able
to populate the asteroid belt. He said that most of the surface area of the
solar system is in the asteroid belt -- but the only way we could really live
out there was if we could create _warm blooded plants_.

~~~
EForEndeavour
Isn't the large total surface area of the asteroid belt overwhelmed by
drawbacks like unusability of most of it for most purposes (uneven, unstable,
unshielded, etc.), and the fact that humans do really poorly in microgravity?

~~~
pedrosorio
That sounds about right. You should check this out of haven’t yet
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(TV_series)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_\(TV_series\))

~~~
EForEndeavour
Thanks for reminding me that I really need to get around to starting Season 4!

------
jolesf
Infinite in All Directions is still one of my favorite science books.

"Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many common features.
They share these features also with other enterprises such as art, literature,
and music. The most salient features of all these enterprises are discipline
and diversity. Discipline to submerge the individual fantasy in a greater
whole. Diversity to give scope to the infinite variety of human souls and
temperaments. Without discipline there can be no greatness. Without diversity
there can be no freedom. Greatness for the enterprise, freedom for the
individual- these are the two themes, contrasting but not incompatible, that
make up the history of science and the history of religion."

~~~
gigama
"Infinite In All Directions" is right here in my current reading stack next to
Loren Eiseley's "All The Strange Hours"... they live on through their written
words and all the lives they touched.

------
morphle
Freeman Dyson exposed and explained Richard Feynmans genius to the world, but
he had better blue thoughts (see my other links in this discussion) than
Feynman had ("Plenty Of Room At The Bottom"), on a par with Alan Kay's blue
thoughts.

He imagined the Dyson Sphere that set me on my path to Science, Carl Sagan
just gave the last push.

He imagined the space chicken and the Kuiper belt/Oort cloud plants.

His carbon cycle ideas have still not been researched seriously.

His essay on the origens of life (started by Gödel) are still ringing in my
brain.

His view of big Napoleon versus small tabletop science is a very valid
analysis of our current crises in science and his solution is to be kind to
the mad scientists and heretics.

By far his best interview is
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBjVHLBEsHI&list=PLzLGaX_Jvm...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBjVHLBEsHI&list=PLzLGaX_JvmJoIGJFR_1M088pMz68qUtnc&index=6&t=0s).
It is also on bittorrent and Peertube.

The rest of the Glorious Accident series is worth it as well, especially the
group discussion at the end.

~~~
irthomasthomas
Blue thoughts?

------
irthomasthomas
"The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are
usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical
consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of cutting grass
in the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to keep horses and
cows alive through the winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was
unknown to the Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval Europe.
Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously
during the so-called Dark Ages. According to the Hay Theory of History, the
invention of hay was the decisive event which moved the center of gravity of
urban civilization from the Mediterranean basin to Northern and Western
Europe. The Roman Empire did not need hay because in a Mediterranean climate
the grass grows well enough in winter for animals to graze. North of the Alps,
great cities dependent on horses and oxen for motive power could not exist
without hay. So it was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations
to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of
Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York."

~~~
jdm2212
This appears to be untrue:

[https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/32538/was-hay-
in...](https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/32538/was-hay-invented-
only-in-the-middle-ages-in-europe)

------
ssivark
A free and original thinker, who wrote well. An intellectual powerhouse with
immense humility. He will be sorely missed.

Here are some of his most interesting tidbits (For a man like Dyson, I'm sure
there's more)

1\. Birds and frogs:
[https://www.ams.org/notices/200902/rtx090200212p.pdf](https://www.ams.org/notices/200902/rtx090200212p.pdf)
(On two kinds of intellectual personalities)

2\. The Scientist as a Rebel (essay collection):
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51431.The_Scientist_as_R...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51431.The_Scientist_as_Rebel)

3\. He has been thoughtfully articulate in his perspective on religion. While
I can't find an appropriate link right away, definitely worth checking out.

Quotes/Excerpts:
[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson)

------
injb
What a loss. There's a fantastic and epic interview with him on youtube
here[1]. He tells stories of famous people he knew, meeting Wittgenstein,
arguing with Teller, going on a road trip across the country with Feynman etc.
Solid gold stuff.

I've heard occasional attacks on him over the bombings of Dresden and Hamburg.
But I think this is worth a read[2]. He speaks very frankly about what they
did and his involvement. It's clear how he felt about it, but he never tries
to make excuses for himself. That impressed me about his character in a way
that's hard to explain.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzDA6mtmKQE...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzDA6mtmKQEgWfcIu49J4nN)

[2] [http://www.bible-researcher.com/dresden/dyson.html](http://www.bible-
researcher.com/dresden/dyson.html)

------
matheist
A couple of years ago I got interested in an old paper of his, "Continuous
Functions Defined on Spheres", where he proves that for any continuous
function defined on the sphere, there are four points forming an equatorial
square (ie four points equally spaced along some great circle) on which the
function takes equal values.

Interestingly, this theorem can be used to prove the Wobbly Table theorem,
that any square table can be rotated on a (possibly bumpy) floor so that all
four legs touch the ground simultaneously.

I found the theorem interesting, and it has the flavor of the Borsuk-Ulam
Theorem (commonly explained as "there are always a pair of antipodal points on
the Earth that have the same temperature and pressure"), but it bugged me that
the proof was not at all similar to the standard proofs of the Borsuk-Ulam
Theorem.

So I found my own proof of Dyson's theorem, in the spirit of the Borsuk-Ulam
Theorem. Wrote it up but didn't publish traditionally — it's at
[https://haggainuchi.com/wobblytable2.html](https://haggainuchi.com/wobblytable2.html)
— but it never occurred to me to send it to Dyson or that he might be
interested.

Too late now, sadly.

------
jes5199
My favorite thing about Dyson was that, in the middle of doing atomic
research, he plotted a graph of the total number of nuclear tests done every
year, and saw that it was increasing exponentially - which caused him to
reverse his position on the use of nuclear devices, and argue to cancel his
own project and all similar projects.

from Dyson's 1962 memo on the Test Ban Treaty:

"The choice, whether or not to accept a test-ban agreement, is thus not a
choice between two static situations, one without testing and the other with
testing at some constant rate. This choice seems rather to be, either to stop
tests, or to continue to double the rate of testing every three years ad
infinitum."

------
earthicus
What an incredible life Freeman Dyson had. The next time you have an hour
free, I'd urge you to watch this autobiographical lecture he gave in 2011, "On
living through four revolutions". In it, he describes his experience
witnessing and participating in (1) the development of space travel, (2)
nuclear energy, (3) molecular biology & the genome, and (4) computers. In
addition to being absolutely fascinating and insightful, this talk does a
fantastic job of showing off his wonderfully dry sense of humor!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zq4p2qbE684](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zq4p2qbE684)

------
lzybkr
I guess it's time to reread Starship and the Canoe - a great book about
Freeman's nuclear weapon powered spaceship and his son George's interest in
building boats. I thoroughly enjoyed it 25+ years ago.

------
gwern
Noted physicist slain by oldest foe, gravity:

"Mia Dyson says her father, at the age of 96 still regularly went to his
office at Princeton University. On Wednesday, on such a visit, she says he
suffered a fall and died of his injuries Friday morning."

TBIs and elder falling are a terrifying source of morbidity and mortality. So
many old people start their terminal decline when they fall, for no
particularly good reason. (Even when it doesn't immediately kill them, it can
contribute to a downward spiral of ill health, less activity, and
iatrogenics.) Who knows how much longer Dyson could have lived if his foot
hadn't slipped?

~~~
blacksmith_tb
I am not sure how long it'd take to become socially acceptable, but I would
bet we could make robotic tails for the elderly to help with balancing...
accelerometer, motors and a few counterweights, controller and battery.

~~~
jey
A lot of people have psychological hurdles to even using a cane. Something
like "I raised N children, I powered through my career, I have been a strong
independent human being as far as I can remember, why should I use a cane?"

~~~
slavik81
You occasionally see Richard Guy walking around our mathematics department
with hiking poles. The man hiked a mountain in his 90s, but he's 103 now and
it seems those days are past. It reminds me to watch where I'm going, lest I
end a living legend.

~~~
slavik81
RIP Richard Guy. [https://science.ucalgary.ca/mathematics-
statistics/about/ric...](https://science.ucalgary.ca/mathematics-
statistics/about/richard-guy)

------
vtomole
I love his "Web of Stories":
[https://www.webofstories.com/play/freeman.dyson/1](https://www.webofstories.com/play/freeman.dyson/1).
Rest in peace.

~~~
OldGuyInTheClub
Yes, definitely marvelous. Also a Youtube Playlist. I'll put it on, go for a
walk, and the time just disappears:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs1jGsn61p8&list=PLVV0r6CmEs...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs1jGsn61p8&list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzDA6mtmKQEgWfcIu49J4nN)

------
jpmattia
For fans of Physics Today, they have put up a link to articles authored by
Dyson over the years:
[https://physicstoday.scitation.org/action/doSearch?AllField=...](https://physicstoday.scitation.org/action/doSearch?AllField=freeman+and+dyson&startPage&ContribAuthorStored=Dyson%2C+Freeman+J)

------
bythckr
Freeman Dyson - Scientific bad-ass. James Dyson - Vacuum cleaner bad-ass.

source:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/comments/diumi/has_anyone...](https://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/comments/diumi/has_anyone_else_ever_confused_freeman_dyson/)

------
adventured
For anyone else that couldn't access it:

[https://outline.com/Aw9mRN](https://outline.com/Aw9mRN)

[http://archive.is/oqumk](http://archive.is/oqumk)

------
dorchadas
While at undergraduate studying physics, I once emailed Dyson asking about
something he had written with regards to NASA, and what he thought the future
of space travel was. I always remember he took the time to respond and email
me back. Was really nice, especially as he gets no telling how many emails a
day, and easily could've ignored it.

------
amha
I heard him speak in 2004, when I was 17. Here's what I wrote in my
LiveJournal at the time:

On Thursday, I saw Freeman Dyson speak at Cornell. He was so amazing I can't
even describe it. I didn’t look at my watch once during the speech. Not long
into the talk, the elderly gentleman next to me pulled a scrap of paper out of
his pocket and began scribbling notes. He kept writing until the end of the
speech. I glanced behind me during the question-and-answer period, and noticed
that Schwartz Auditorium was so full that people were standing in the balcony
and sitting on the railings just to hear Dyson.

The text of Dyson’s speech would have impressed any English teacher. He
structured it as seven short stories, with each one slowly building on each
other. The style of his writing––the way he chose his words and structured his
sentences––would have been impressive if he had been giving a lecture in the
humanities, much less a field stereotyped for less-able communicators. The way
Dyson was able to convey the sheer wonder of science was an orgasmic
experience equivalent to reading my first Carl Sagan book.

An 80-year-old physicist who had the energy of a young assistant professor,
who delivered his speech fluidly and responded deftly to the audience’s
questions––a scientist proficient in more than one science, and fluent enough
in biology to give an entire lecture on biotechnology!!!! Oh wow...

------
Freestyler_3
I think last week someone mentioned the dyson sphere with a link to wiki. It
said he regretted they named it after him.

~~~
mcrider
Huh, I'd be curious to see that source. I know he somewhat recanted the idea
of a Dyson _sphere_ , as it is completely impractical even with unimagined
technology (re: tensile strength of the materials, and preventing such a
megastructure from falling into the sun whenever a rock hits it). But he later
proposed the idea of a Dyson _swarm_ , an extremely large array of solar-
sucking satellites orbiting the sun as an idea that's theoretically possible
even with today's technology.

~~~
theothermkn
One thing that's slightly interesting about Dyson Sphere's is that spherical
shells of matter exert exactly no gravitational pull at any point in their
interiors. That is, the integral of gravitational pull over the whole shell is
identically 0 for every point inside the shell.* This goes for any force that
falls off by the inverse square rule, e.g. the electrostatic force.

In short, there's no practical way to stick an atmosphere, much less a
civilization composed of life forms that depend on gravity, to the inside of
the sphere, even if the other engineering challenges could be overcome.

* One thing that's suddenly more interesting to me now is if the _space_ at any point is being "pulled" equally in all directions, _resulting_ in zero force, or if the bends in space-time cancel out. In the limit, for example, could you "tear" space-time inside a dense enough and/or heavy enough shell of matter?

~~~
aeorgnoieang
> there's no practical way to stick an atmosphere, much less a civilization
> composed of life forms that depend on gravity, to the inside of the sphere

Why not spin the sphere? Given the immense surface area, it wouldn't even
matter that the centripetal force would only be strongest around the
'equator'.

So, the plan would be:

1\. Create a giant rotating sphere around our Sun.

2\. Create a ring world around the 'equator' of the inside of the sphere (i.e.
a ring of walls high enough to hold in the resident's preferred atmosphere).

3\. Install solar panels everywhere else.

4\. Profit!

~~~
saijanai
Why not just a ring, instead?

It's been done, of course...

------
hermitcrab
His paper "Time without end : Physics and biology in an open universe" is
worth a read:
[http://www.astro.caltech.edu/ay1/RevModPhys.51.447.pdf](http://www.astro.caltech.edu/ay1/RevModPhys.51.447.pdf)

------
jonjacky
A book called something like 'Quantum Mysteries for Bluffers' described his
work on QED this way:

Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga independently discovered quantum
electrodynamics. Then Freeman Dyson explained it -- to the first three!

------
cpach
RIP.

Here’s an article: [https://www.mainepublic.org/post/renowned-mathematician-
and-...](https://www.mainepublic.org/post/renowned-mathematician-and-
physicist-freeman-dyson-has-died-age-96)

------
kwindla
The Times obituary mentions two books that give a sense of what Dyson was like
as a thinker and conversationalist.

> He appeared in John McPhee’s book “The Curve of Binding Energy” (1974), a
> portrait of Ted Taylor, the nuclear scientist who led the Orion effort, and
> in Kenneth Brower’s “The Starship and the Canoe” (1978). In a memorable
> scene, Mr. Brower wrote of Dr. Dyson’s reunion with his son, George, who had
> turned his back on high technology to live in a treehouse in British
> Columbia and build a seafaring canoe.

Both books are very much worth reading.

------
ck2
May seem trivial but the Dyson Sphere was the most amazing thing I ever
learned about though Star Trek, awe inspiring in that it really is
theoretically possible for us to build in thousands of years.

------
sadfev
No! He was a hero to any aspiring physicist.

I can’t even begin to list his accomplishments!

------
Rebelgecko
The obit refers to him as "Dr. Dyson". Did he ever get a doctorate?

edit: I'll leave this up for posterity, but the answer is no. The article
explains the discrepancy.

~~~
Iwan-Zotow
"Freeman Dyson, renowned physicist and educator, today (May 17) received an
honorary doctor of science degree at Clarkson University"

------
charlieo88
Are they sure he’s dead and that someone hasn’t erected a shell around him
absorbing all of his radiant energy?

------
tazedsoul
Bittersweet news -- but he lived a productive and long life.

I came upon parasitic numbers by researching Freeman Dyson one day. Very cool.
Read up on them:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitic_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitic_number)

------
bhickey
Between ten and fifteen years ago I was at a colloquium featuring Leon Cooper,
Craig Venter and Freeman Dyson (via video). At one point in the conversation,
Dyson slumped over only to rouse a few minutes later. He rejoined the
conversation without missing a beat.

------
dannylandau
Worth watching, Freemon Dyson life stories --
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs1jGsn61p8&list=PLVV0r6CmEs...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs1jGsn61p8&list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzDA6mtmKQEgWfcIu49J4nN)

------
mhh__
With the exception of his views on climate change, he was probably my
favourite living physicist. 94 years is an extremely good (I realise this now
that I have a single grandparent left, one down before I was born) innings,
but what a shame.

------
timonoko
Orbitsville - Urbanization of a Dyson Sphere:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbitsville](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbitsville)

------
fermenflo
Damn, I'm doing research involving partitions right now. I used crank/rank all
the time -invariants that he introduced years ago. What a shame, RIP

------
s_dev
He was interesting character partially because he believed in God.

This is actually quite rare at the very upper echelons of the scientific
community.

~~~
NikolaeVarius
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson#Science_and_reli...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson#Science_and_religion)

Seems more complicated than that

> I am a practicing Christian but not a believing Christian. To me, to worship
> God means to recognize that mind and intelligence are woven into the fabric
> of our universe in a way that altogether surpasses our comprehension

~~~
tazedsoul
I truly appreciate thinkers who are able to think about God in their own
original terms. His particular description of the notion of God is quite
similar to my own, so this is quite nice to read.

------
neonate
[https://archive.md/4I0Lm](https://archive.md/4I0Lm)

------
DesiLurker
He should be buried in a spherical grave! then he would always be in his dyson
sphere. RIP!!

------
lordleft
Rest in Peace. And amazing example of academic and intellectual success sans-
phd.

------
wiggles_md
Why does Freeman Dyson earn a black bar, and Katherine Johnson not?

~~~
oska
I think the answer to this is that it is their site and their honour to
bestow.

------
mirap
He’s in the Dyson sphere now.

------
sunstone
One for the ages.

------
alpb
It would be great if the moderators could change the link to a non-paywalled
link.

------
dang
Url changed from
[https://twitter.com/gbrumfiel/status/1233434046266531840](https://twitter.com/gbrumfiel/status/1233434046266531840)
to a more substantive article (via
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22444492](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22444492)).

------
jaredhansen
I think it would be appropriate to break out the black bar for this one.

For those not familiar:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson)

~~~
s_dev
No black bar for Dyson. The black bars overwhelmingly go to the titans of
(digital) tech rather than titans of science.

------
adpirz
I really feel like it's worth having this discussion: the black bar for
Freeman Dyson, but not for Katherine Johnson who died earlier this week.

At the time I thought it was likely because she wasn't _directly_ involved in
computing and tried to write it off, but Freeman seems to be as related to the
page as her. I bring it up because it really does speak to how a community
decides who they want to include or not. Unless I've missed some specific
guidelines, it sends unwelcoming signals to me.

~~~
krapp
The community doesn't decide who gets the black bar or not, and there are no
published guidelines. AFAIK it's entirely the personal preference of the
admins, or possibly just dang.

Maybe Katherine Johnson just wasn't considered notable enough, or maybe the
story just wasn't noticed. I wouldn't necessarily attribute it to sexism,
though - there have been male obits that haven't gotten the black bar either.

------
ISL
Here's a vote for an HN black bar. Dyson's work was incredible.

~~~
jeswin
I think prevailing opinion here is that it should be left to the admins. The
black bar is not a measure of the notability of someone's contributions, but
rather is about their connection or impact to YC/HN (and the HN community).

Personally I agree with that. The newspapers will have great obituaries
anyway.

------
IGotThroughIt
Love the man. May he RIP. He contributed greatly in debunking climate
alarmism. One of the few scientists who were brave enough to go against the
annoying PC culture around this issue. Good man. He did great work.

------
starpilot
He was the sanest mind on climate change:
[https://e360.yale.edu/features/freeman_dyson_takes_on_the_cl...](https://e360.yale.edu/features/freeman_dyson_takes_on_the_climate_establishment)

~~~
nerpderp82
> Dyson contends that since carbon dioxide is good for plants, a warmer planet
> could be a very good thing. And if CO2 does get to be a problem, Dyson
> believes we can just do some genetic engineering to create a new species of
> super-tree that can suck up the excess.

Forever the optimist!

~~~
logfromblammo
That is actually work-in-process. Biological engineers are trying to upgrade
C3 plants to C4, improve rubisco efficiency, and other such performance
enhancers for photosynthesis.

It's not so much driven by climate changes as by potential agricultural
profits, though. If it were the former, they'd make an algae 2.0 and drop it
in the ocean. But as C3 to C4 modification could make a hotter, drier rice
with 20%-50% higher yield, that's worth a whole lot of money.

Of course, that work has been underway for decades--even before CRISPR/Cas9--
and golden rice got stomped for no good reason, so even if someone made a
super-Sitka-pine exclusively for carbon fixation, it could still get blocked
by politics.

