[extropy-chat] sjbrain calcs

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 20, 2003 at 10:23:41AM -0800, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> > 
> > I am wondering, since we are dealing with micron sized particles,
> > whether you could actually have a sperical cloud rather than a dust
> > ring without lots of collisions of particles. I am wondering if
> 
> You can't, of course. Spike, don't you know what happens at the
> poles, where
> all orbits intersect?
> 
> > electrostatic repulsion would be sufficient at those scales to
> prevent
> > actual collisions and instead replicate a form of brownian motion.
> > Theoretically, by living off of solar energy, such particles could
> > avoid loss of momentum that such motion would cause.
> 
> I don't see how you can actively control particle orbits without
> using solar
> sails (+PV panels as dual use), and this implies pretty big ones. At
> least
> somethign the size of your palm, depending on how it scales a lot
> bigger.

Well, lets look at the inner region of the spherical cloud. You have
particles grazing past each other but repelling all the time. Because
they have been in orbit a long time, they have built up significant
charges in their capacitor reservoirs that their computational and
communications systems bleed potential off of for power. 

The computational structures might even be built into the dielectric
compounds of the capacitor structure. The particles are built so that
they maintain a surface charge that is identical to the charge of the
solar wind. This exterior surface electrode doubles as a radio antenna
to broadcast to other picarticles. And the surface also features
regions of tungsten lattices to extract high quanta from solar flux and
drain heat.

Back to the orbital dynamics: in their pseudo-brownian motion, some
particles will repel other particles in vectors that drops them below
orbital velocity. They drop to lower orbits, pick up more solar flux,
and are able to grab passing protons and hurl them onto new vectors at
higher velocities with some of this flux, and rejoin the greater
spherical community.

=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
                                       - Gen. John Stark
"Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..."
                                       - Mike Lorrey
Do not label me, I am an ism of one...
Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com

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