[ExI] Von Neumann Probes

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat
...

So how much energy would it take to accelerate, say, a 200g object to our arbitrary speed of 0.01c?

Duck.ai is telling me:

<,,,"To calculate the energy required to accelerate an object, you can use the formula for kinetic energy: KE=1/2​mv^2. For a mass of 200 grams (0.2 kg) and a speed of 0.01c (where c is the speed of light, approximately 3×10^8 m/s), the energy needed would be about 0.0001 joules."






Ben, I am getting about 10^12 Joules rather than DuckAI's 10-4.  A mere 16 orders of magnitude ratio should not worry us, ja?



...

When I do that calculation, I get 900 billion joules, so somebody's getting it badly wrong.

KE = 0.5 * 0.2 * 3,000,000^2
= about 1.3 billion small tins of beans
(as opposed to about one-thousandth of a bean)

Help me, somebody who has a clue.

Oh, hang on, I asked for more details, now it gives me (after a bunch of incomprehensible maths) 3.6 x 10^21 Joules!

So around 10 orders of magnitude bigger than my answer.

I'm fairly confident now, that to accelerate a 200g probe to 0.01c would take somewhere between 0.0001 and 3,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules. Sorted :/

--
Ben

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Your calculation is right Ben.  I rounded up the .9 to 1.

Never trust those AI bahstids.  They don't know what they are calculating about.

spike