[ExI] Von Neumann Probes

[Jason Resch]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 7:31 AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

>
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> On Mon, Jan 26, 2026 at 8:52 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> *>> And why would ET go to all that trouble anyway? *
>>
>>
>> *> Colder computers can store and erase information more efficiently (if
>> you plug in the formula for Landauer's limit). Black hole horizons are the
>> coldest objects in the universe.*
>
>
> *So ET is so obsessed with wringing ever last joule of energy out of their
> heat engine that they **think** the 2.7 degree temperature of the Cosmic
> Microwave Background Radiation isn't cold enough so they use a LARGE black
> hole as a heat sink instead to slightly improve the efficiency of their
> heat engine.*
>

Ite not a "slight improvement." It's an efficiency improvement of many
billions of times.

Even a small black hole (a few meters across, with the mass of Jupiter) is
10^-8 degrees, so close to a billion times colder than background
radiation. A galactic center black hole can be a trillion times colder than
the background radiation.

So it is not a "slight improvement in efficiency," it's equivalent to being
able to perform billions or trillion of times as many non-reversible
computations for the same expenditure of energy.


* BUT they don't mind the fact that every star in the universe is radiating
> all its energy uselessly into infinite empty space! That doesn't make
> sense. But I know of an explanation to explain the lack of observational
> evidence of Dyson spheres, and unlike your explanation it's not
> convoluted.  *
>

Consider the alien civilization that collapsed Jupiter into a black hole,
and then used the hydrogen in Saturn for a fusion reactor.

The sun is 3500 times as massive as Saturn, but the efficiency gains of the
setup I describe mean you get *a million times* as many computations using
Saturn as fuel and bh-Jupiter as a heatsink then you get from using a Dyson
swarm to collect all the radiation from the sun over the next 5 billion
years and radiating all the waste heat into 2.7K space.

Jason



> *John K Clark*
>
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>>
>> On Mon, Jan 26, 2026, 8:25 AM John Clark via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, Jan 26, 2026 at 7:57 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> * >>  It makes no difference how the energy is produced, according to
>>>>> the Second Law Of Thermodynamics if you make a vast amount of energy then
>>>>> you're going to make a vast amount of waste energy in the form of infrared
>>>>> radiation, and to us that will look like a very intense point source. *
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> * > If you have a black hole, can't that be used to dispose of the
>>>> waste heat?*
>>>
>>>
>>> *If you beam the heat as infrared radiation toward the black hole some
>>> of that beam will inevitably scatter and be detectable. And any process
>>> that moves energy from point A to point B is never 100% efficient so trying
>>> to dispose of the heat would create more heat that astronomers could
>>> detect. And the black hole would have to be a big one because small ones
>>> are too hot, and having a big black hole in your solar system would not be
>>> very comfortable for ET. *
>>>
>>> *And why would ET go to all that trouble anyway? *
>>>
>>
>> Colder computers can store and erase information more efficiently (if you
>> plug in the formula for Landauer's limit). Black hole horizons are the
>> coldest objects in the universe. Place a computer at the focus of a
>> parabolic mirror pointed at a large diameter black hole, and you have the
>> most efficient physically possible non-reversible computer that can be
>> engineered with (human-known) physics.
>>
>> Jason
>>
>>
>>
>>> * >> But we have seen nothing that looks like that.*
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> * > Not yet, we haven't. That doesn't mean they don't exist.*
>>>
>>>
>>> *I think it means exactly that because the simplest explanation is the
>>> best. *
>>>
>>> *John K Clark*
>>>
>>>
>>>
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