 The Dyson Sphere was constructed over a million years ago by an unknown race, and abandoned several thousand years ago, presumably due to instability in the central star. The carbon-neutronium shell is approximately 2500 metres thick, and is presumed to contain circulation equipment for the Class-M environmental systems as well as artificial gravity and power generators, but this is an as-yet untested hypothesis, since only limited access has been gained and sensors are unable to penetrate the material. The upper atmosphere polarises to provide an artificial day/night cycle of 15.4 hours of light and 10.2 hours of darkness. The term Dyson Sphere concept was first described by Olaf Stapledon in his science fiction novel Star Maker (1937), and later popularized by Freeman Dyson in his 1960 paper "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation". The type of megastructure described by Stapledon and Dyson was not in fact a solid structure but a swarm of solar collectors designed to harness the energy of a central star. Later extrapolations of the concept evolved into the type of hollow sphere eventually encountered by the USS Jenolan in 2294 and rediscovered by the USS Enterprise-D in 2369.
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