What Would Happen To A Dyson Swarm Without Maintenance?

If an advanced race builds a Dyson Swarm comprised of millions of habitats and billions of solar collectors orbiting a star, and then are completely and inexplicably all killed with minimal damage to what they built, what would happen to their Dyson Swarm? Assume the swarm is located 0.3 to 1 AU from their star, a yellow dwarf like our Sun. I would think that without course corrections being made, the various parts of the swarm would collide with each other over time, scattering fragments everywhere and causing more collisions. Would the objects tend to fly off into space, or would their orbits decay into their sun? Over millions or billions of years, would the fragments aggregate into a new planet or something? Would they form a new asteroid belt of sorts, but in a sort of thick shell around the sun, instead of in a ring, due to the high orbital inclination of many of the objects in question?

posted about 5 years ago

Richard Smith‭

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