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August 21, 2025 23 mins

What does it take to turn the Sun into a power grid? Discover the step-by-step path from asteroid mining to a star-spanning megastructure.


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Credits:

Building a Dyson Swarm... from Scratch

Written, Produced & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur

Graphics: Bryan Versteeg, Jeremy Jozwik, Ken York Sergio Botero

Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images

Music Courtesy of Epidemic Sound http://epidemicsound.com/creator


Chapters

0:00 Intro What Is a Dyson Swarm?

5:49 Gathering the Materials

9:40 Proto-Swarm: Our First Steps

13:05 Mining the Solar System

14:33 Beyond Mercury: The True Scale of the Swarm

19:10 Ghosts of Friendship Past

20:34 Building Habitats: How Much Mass Do We Really Need?

27:42 The Long Dawn of a Stellar Civilization

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