[extropy-chat] In the Long Run, How Much Does Intelligence Dominate Space?

[Damien Sullivan]

On Thu, Jul 06, 2006 at 10:12:49PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:

> Well, I figure if Criswell can figure out a way to actually
> *lift* star matter (!), then get it to go bang should be
> comparatively simple.

Looks a lot harder to me.  For lifting you just heat up the outer
layers of the star and collect the matter.  For a bang... fusion
reactions are *hard*, it's difficult enough to get them to happen at
all, let alone explosively.  Stars do sometimes go bang but under
special circumstances, one of which is being very massive.  And if it's
not worth sending probes around it's probably not worth trying to move
*stars* together.  The other condition is having a white dwarf in a
binary system -- not sure if companion main sequence works, or if you need
white dwarf + a (usually red) giant.

And why would you make a star go bang?  How would you store or use the
energy?  I guess distilling the energy as (anti)matter streams might
look attractive, but you're talking about passing the energy of a
stellar mass through a much smaller distillery in a fraction of a
second.

> > Don't see the gain there even if you don't care about the future.
> > (And hey, weren't you the one going I'm going to live a trillion
> > years,
> 
> And just why not?   :-)

I think his point was that seems inconsistent with blowing up stars to
live as quickly as possible.

> Yes, up to the chance that I can partake, and yes, also out of
> some residual loyalty to the human race, my family, nation, etc.,
> and other outmoded loyalties in the age of individualism.

The age of individualism, hmm.  Individual freedom has gone up in some
ways, but in others we seem more interdependent than ever before.

-xx- Damien X-)