[ExI] Silence in the sky-but why?

[Kelly Anderson]

On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 11:43 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>  At some point somewhere in time, some intelligent life form was the very
> first.
>

Clearly, this must be the case. The obvious question is whether we are the
very first.


> We can set aside for now the argument that this first wise guy is us, and
> agree that somewhere and somewhen in the observable universe, someone was
> first.
>

Tautology, even if it is us.


> If we assume, quite reasonably, that this first intelligent tech-enabled
> species wanted to colonize the universe or at least the galaxy it
> inhabited, I proposed years ago a design for an MBrain node, that looks
> like this:
>

I don't follow the design especially, but the concept yes.


> The reason I wanted to start with the assumption of the first intelligent
> species is that that particular species would definitely see a radio silent
> sky, and all the signals it sent out would go forever into cold dark dead
> space.  So if that species wanted to spread, it would need to move actual
> matter, atoms and molecules, rather than instructions on how to build
> copies of itself.  So, these nodes would need to go.
>
> There is a good reason to think interstellar space could have diffuse
> hydrogen clouds that would be mission-enders if you encounter one, even at
> .001c.  Your spacecraft would ablate away.  But if you took your entire
> star along, then the radiation from that star would dissipate the hydrogen,
> as our star does now.****
>
> Approximate dimensions about 120 mm diameter, so it is about the size of
> our DVDs for those of you who are old enough to remember those, and with
> three LCD regions for maintaining a desired attitude towards the first
> smart star, I showed that a sufficiently large swarm of these things could
> move a star anywhere you wanted to go.
>
But how many millions of years would it take to get it moving at a
reasonable speed? Have you done those calculations Spike? I'm sure it
depends on how many devices you make and how large they are and so forth...
but assuming you take half the mass of the asteroid belt and build these
things out of it... what kind of acceleration would you get?

The other thing is how would you agree which direction to go? I'm guessing
humanity would want to move to the outside of the galaxy where the
metalicity is higher (more gold, seems like a good reason to go
somewhere... LOL) but seriously, how would you figure out the right
direction to go? Ok, you might be able to compute a good direction with
regards to the imminent collision with the Andromeda Galaxy... :-)

> ****
>
> My realization today is that with an MBrain moving a star, it could go to
> a binary where both stars in the binary are on the main sequence.  For main
> sequence stars, the luminosity increases as 2^3.5 times the mass.  So
> doubling the mass would increase the luminosity by a factor of about 10,
> and this would increase the available acceleration by 10.  So the trick is
> to move the home star to the nearest star and collide them, assuming their
> combined mass is below the limit so that the combined stars would not go
> supernova, then speed off at an acceleration of 10 times as many nanometers
> per second squared, or if you don’t mind the oddball unit, several tens of
> meters per square year.
>
If staring at your navel is indeed where such civilizations actually go,
then moving the star about would use a lot of matter that could otherwise
be used to create more navels... so that eventuality is still an
interesting answer to the Fermi Paradox.

> ****
>
> Oy vey, I realized that this whole post is babbling, and assumes everyone
> who reads this far was in on the discussing going back at least ten years.
> ****
>
> I need to go back and write some introduction to moving stars with
> MBrains.  Does everyone here know what I mean by that?  You reflect some
> fraction of the star’s radiant energy in one direction, and since momentum
> is conserved, the whole star and planet system goes the opposite direction
> the MBrain aims the light.  Today’s realization: you combine stars to make
> them faster.  The first smart species would eventually invent an MBrain and
> start rocketing away to the nearest star.  Wouldn’t it?
>
Astronomer dudes... would there be any way of detecting a star moving in
such an unnatural way? Would this be of SETI interest? Any efforts along
those lines?

-Kelly
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