>>13931693No, there are many ways to build photovoltaic cells.
A Dyson swarm is just a mass of orbiting objects, which combined dim the light of the star so only infrared light is visible from the outside, similar to how fog is made out of many tiny water droplets.
You would need to deconstruct around 3 planets to have the amount of mass required to build a full Dyson swarm, so Mercury, Venus, and some moons and minor planets (Earth obviously preserved). You could also lift 100% of the building material out the Sun, because the Sun contains more "metals" (matter that is not hydrogen or helium) than all the rest of the solar system combined.
A Dyson swarm, if built for human habitation, would have more living space than all habitable and terraformable planets in our galaxy.
