[ExI] simulation as an improvement over reality

[spike]

On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 11:26 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> ... On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes
> ...
>>>...I recall a sci-fi story where intelligent life was discovered on a
neutron star...
>
>> Hi Adrian, the neutron star part sounds like a flaw in an otherwise cool
premise...

>I could be wrong about the type of star.  I mainly remember that it was
fast-lived, fast-generation life forms that evolved to live on a certain
type of star.

Oh OK cool.  One could have lifeforms on a post main-sequence cooling star,
extracting high entropy energy off the warm surface and radiating even
higher entropy energy into the cold cosmos.  That lifeform postdates even
theoretical MBrains, and could even be thought of as the inevitable endgame
of every MBrain.  As the star cools, the MBrain nodes crowd in ever closer
to the energy source, like cosmic campers crowding closer to the dying
embers of a stellar campfire on a sparkling and frosty late evening.  The
nodes would perhaps eventually realize they must give up their orbitty ways,
settle on down to the surface and take on a new phase of life.  

One can have a low mass star which eventually goes thru all the stages of
the main sequence, eventually forming iron at its core.  The iron core grows
as the star continues to cool and shrink.  Once iron is formed, if the star
is too small to form neutronium, there are no more possible nuclear
reactions, since that is the element at the very bottom of the energy well:
iron is completely stable nuclearly.  Yes I know nuclearly isn't a
legitimate word, but I like it anyway.  So eventually all the smaller stars
form an iron ball with concentric shells of lighter stuff, carbon, silicon,
then oxygen and hydrogen, forever radiating less and less, forever cooling
into deep eternity until heat death of the universe.

Adrian thanks man, that was is very insightful.  It never occurred to me
there was a stage of life that is post-MBrain. What could we call it?  A
crust brain?  

Is astronomy cool or what?  {8^D

spike