[ExI] Silence in the sky-but why?

[Kelly Anderson]

On Mon, Sep 2, 2013 at 8:48 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>
> -----Original Message-----
> On Sun, Sep 01, 2013 at 04:23:46PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote:
>
> > But how many millions of years would it take to get it moving at a
> > reasonable speed? Have you done those calculations Spike?
>
> I have done the calcs on it, takes 20 million years to get to the nearest
> star from here, doesn't ever get up to a reasonable speed for interstellar
> travel.  The speed once it reaches the nearest star is about 200-ish meters
> per second, about the speed of a Booeing 737.  The real magic is that you
> can deflect off of the nearest star gravitationally, and pick up some of
> its
> orbital velocity around the center of the galaxy.  This is a good idea,
> since with this scheme you can't actually stop at the target star; you just
> go zooming on past.  But it isn't really like flying over Salt Lake City on
> your way to Denver, for you leave behind some MBrain nodes at the target
> star, so they use the metal that is there and start a new MBrain.
>

It would seem that over a VERY long time period, one could detect this kind
of spreading of MBrains in the astronomic data. If a star changes direction
or acceleration, that is certainly observable, but you would have to watch
over a very very long period of time, unless you could predict what the
pattern would be. Would they head off away from each other? In the
direction with the least likely future MBrains? Who knows? But the
direction of highest degree of long term reproduction would be a fairly
good guess.


> > 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?  Kelly
>
> The sample calcs I did require about 20% of the asteroid belt and max
> acceleration is in the pico-G range as I recall, which is why I used the
> units meters per square year rather than an alternative picometers per
> square second.  This whole notion isn't for the impatient types, who insist
> on rushing around in the lifetime of a particular species.
>

LOL. No, this is clearly a scheme for the patient. The problem is whether,
in all that time, someone would come up with a "better" use for all that
matter.


> >...You're competing against relativistic craft ~kg to ~ton range, capable
> of 1-10 g acceleration... Eugen
>
> That depends on what your definition of "compete" is.  The other fast
> species can do their thing, while the MBrain goes about its business on a
> different time scale.
>
> > The other thing is how would you agree which direction to go? ...  Kelly
>
> What you mean you?  You and I wouldn't need to agree.  The MBrain makes
> that
> decision without consulting humanity, and does what it collectively decides
> to do.  If your question is how does an MBrain decide things and can you
> have competing MBrains around the same star, my answer is I don't know and
> I
> don't know.  But MBrains are smart, so I would trust them to do the right
> thing.
>

I'm guessing they would want to optimize for long term spreading of their
MBrainness, but who knows, I'm certainly not that smart.


> >I'm guessing humanity would want to move to the outside of the
> galaxy...Kelly
>
> Perhaps.  Metal is very valuable in this scheme, but the outboard guys can
> carry metals inboard with them.  The MBrain as photon rocket notion carries
> all the planets and everything else in there along for the ride.
>

Yup. I get it.


> >...Humanity that chose to become solid state or begat solid state will go
> everywhere it pleases... Eugen
>
> Ja, if that becomes reality, this other scheme is likely a nonstarter.  But
> humans to solid state is pie in the sky tech, whereas we have everything,
> or
> durn near almost everything we need right now to build an MBrain.  MBrain
> tech is now potatoes on the plate technology.  If humanity suffers a peak
> collective intelligence and starts declining (I can think of several
> mechanisms that could cause that) then we may never achieve human
> intelligence to solid state, and if not, we may never get out of the
> cradle.
> But if we create the means of converting the asteroid belt to an MBrain,
> then we start along the 20 million year journey to the next star, then the
> next intelligent life form will see a star coming at a couple hundred
> meters
> per second, realize there are wonderful opportunities, etc.
>
> Kelly more directly to your question, it could be that the original MBrain
> merely gets programmed to head off to the nearest star, with the MBrains
> never having anything like intelligence.  The nodes just do what they do,
> like 6E26 chess computers, never developing intelligence or ever wanting
> to.
>
> > ...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...
> > :-)
> Kelly_______________________________________________
>
>
> OK Kelly and other MBrain fans, here's your assignment: propose a direction
> to start.
>
> Considerations:  as I noted before, the luminosity of a star on the main
> sequence scales as the 3.5 power of the mass, so if you double the mass of
> a
> star, its luminosity goes up by about 11 but its mass doubles, so the
> acceleration available with an MBrain goes up by five and some change.
>  With
> that information, we want a star which we can combine with ours and still
> be
> on the main sequence, for causing a supernova could spoil an MBrain's whole
> eon.
>
> I haven't worked out the details on whether colliding two stars would cause
> a nova (note difference between nova and supernova.)  I suspect any star
> collision would cause a nova, but that is not a show stopper I wouldn't
> think.
>
> There is another thing I thought of.  Just as it might be possible to
> combine two stars, it might be possible to collide two stars in such a way
> as to create a smaller star.  If for instance you have a 1 solar mass star
> colliding with another 1 solar mass star, you might be able to arrange the
> collision to create a 1.8 solar mass star and a 0.2, the smaller one going
> zinging off with enormous velocity.  Why would you do that?  We only have a
> few billion years before main sequence stars start to go red giant, and
> even
> less than a paltry billion years for the bigger stars.  But if you take a
> star on the main sequence and remove some of the mass, its lifetime is
> extended enormously.  The resulting star becomes more difficult to steer,
> because the luminosity available for the MBrain to deflect is lowered by a
> factor of about 280 and the mass is lowered by a factor of 5, so the
> available acceleration is lower by a factor of about 56, but the star's
> lifetime is extended by a factor of about 25.  So with that technique we
> are
> partially freed from that tight deadline only a few billion years away and
> approaching rapidly.
>
> MBrain star steering is not for impatient types who expect everything to
> happen in this particular geological age.  It helps to look at things from
> the perspective of the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt.  All these eons, the
> greenstone watched these life forms pop out of the sea, swarm all over the
> place, run around in circles, accomplish nothing from the perspective of
> moving off to the nearest star and joining the others, or if there are no
> others, then becoming the others.
>

The other thing to consider is whether there would be any advantages to be
gained in creating a binary star system somewhere along the line. A binary
system might have some interesting advantages over a single star system.
More mass without going supernova being just the start of the potential
list. Pick up stars that have a good long life ahead of them, leaving
behind stars that might be going supernova in the next billion years or so.
Picture running (albeit very slowly) away from an impending (in a billion
years) supernova... pretty interesting idea. Maybe the earth won't be
swallowed by our expanding sun when the time comes... maybe...

-Kelly
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20130906/5ddfe826/attachment.html>