[ExI] The Great Silence again

[Eugen Leitl]

On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 02:52:56PM -0500, Damien Broderick wrote:
>> Inoculated cultures grow always spherically.
>
> Unless there's something nasty and poisonous over to one side, like, I  
> dunno, lots of gamma bursters near a galactic core, etc, and fewer  

Machine-phase farts in GRB's general direction. Machine-phase
can observe accretion disks from close distance, with only minimal 
shielding. Machine-phase inhales ionized clouds where D. radiodurans
used to be. It's hard to imagine how badass machine-phase is for
us squishies. 

> nutrients on the other side, so you get an annulus.

This is 3d solid medium. More primitive cultures would
use one-star hops, but soon after you can cross intergalactic
voids with just advanced rabbit slippers.

We're looking at feature sizes like Virgo supercluster to
local supercluster. It is definitely hard to miss.

All of the other explanations are weird and weirder. The
logical approach is to to go for the simplest possible
explanation, however dull and boring one personally finds
it -- there's always chance for getting surprised that way.