Earth Shell

I'm not actually "proposing" this as an idea for many obvious reasons, but I thought this community might be a place where someone might have heard of this being handled in a sci-fi context.

What I envision is enclosing Earth and its atmosphere in a giant shell. Maybe it would have a radius of a half-million miles, and would include the moon in its orbit, so tides would not be effected. This shell would, through some purely hypothetical* technology take all the solar radiation that hits it and spread it uniformly around its entire inner surface. Furthermore, it would go through a 24-hour cycle that goes blocking enough light so that it's dark as night down here on the surface to letting enough through so that it's as bright as noon, then back to darkness.

This way, day and night would occur at the same time at all longitudes. Financial markets would open and close at the same time, relatives in other countries would be awake at the same time, etc.

If the day/night cycle were always 12 hours of each, it would be like an equinox every day of the year; there would be no seasons. This would screw with the life cycles of many species and probably collapse the ecosystem. Or, the ratio of day to night could be artificially manipulated to simulate seasons. On the first day of "spring", start lightening the entire sphere at 6:00 AM and darkening it about six PM. As you get closer to "summer" the areas near the poles are never darkened and the sphere is lightened sooner and darkened later at higher latitudes than at the equator, then the process is reversed until you get another 12/12 day for the beginning of "fall," then you begin to keep bigger and bigger areas around the poles in constant dark.

Anyone ever hear of anything like this?

*And by hypothetical I mean most likely friggin' impossible.