[extropy-chat] ASTRO: Spitzer/SIRTF images released

[Spike]

> Harvey said:
> > 
> > So it seems that it would be impossible for SIRTF to see a Jupiter
> > brain.
> 
> Well, maybe not. If you look at the results of SIRTF's observations of
> Fomalhaut, its observations indicate that the lopsided dust patterns
> indicate the possibility of either a recent asteroid collision or that
> jupiter sized planets are shepherding dust.
> 
> =====
> Mike Lorrey


Fortunately we have our own on-board expert in interplanetary
dust, Dr. Graps.  I might speculate that a JBrain would somehow 
figure a way to use that dust by making it into computronium?  
Perhaps a JBrain might have little or no solid core, having 
dissembled itself into dust in order to maximize its surface 
area, so that its actual size is enormous, perhaps much larger 
in volume than the star that it orbits.  

Aside: This is a variation on Robert's MBrain notion: instead 
of the MBrain nodes forming a enormous shell surrounding the 
star, they would form a sphere orbitting the star, perhaps to 
reduce the distance between and thus latency between nodes.  Call 
it an SMBrain, SM for Spherical-Matrioshka?  No wait, that makes 
it sound like it uses all that brainpower thinking about
kinky sex games involving chains and whips.  SBrain?

If a light-minute diameter spherical cloud of computronium
particles each a picogram (about 50 billion C atoms, or a 
sphere about a micron diameter if I calculate it in my head) 
were to orbit a sunlike star, with a total mass of the cloud 
about one Jupiter, lets calculate the expected temperature 
gradient of the particles near the center and near the edge.
Then we can estimate the chances of SIRTF (a Lockheeed Martin
product btw) seeing it, or rather the maximum distance at
which SIRTF could see it.

Hold on, this is going to take some calculations and thinking.
More later.  spike