The Dyson Sphere is a concept envisioned by physicist Freeman Dyson (no affiliation with the vacuum company) in which humankind would develop some sort of megastructure surrounding the Sun to harness its seemingly-limitless energy supply.
Comparable concepts have made their way into favorite science fiction films, such as Star Wars, but just how far away are we from doing something like this in real life? Realistically… probably not even close. In fact, it's probably not even possible.
Creating a full-on Dyson Sphere would necessitate an unrealistic supply of resources, and even if we could find the materials we’d need to get the job done, the Sun is so powerful that such a structure likely wouldn’t be able to contain its power. Instead, it would collapse.
Instead, a more realistic idea might be that of a Dyson Swarm, which would involve building a multitude of smaller objects that would orbit the Sun to capture its energy and relay it back to civilization on Earth.
It doesn’t seem likely that humankind will be bringing these concepts to fruition anytime soon, but if they ever did become a real thing, then they would be particularly useful for interplanetary colonization and deep-space science missions.
