[extropy-chat] will the sun rise?

[Keith Henson]

At 02:45 PM 25/12/04 -0500, Eliezer wrote:
>Keith Henson wrote:
>>At 05:37 PM 23/12/04 -0500, Eliezer wrote:
>>snip
>>
>>>One suspects that the primary issue would not be speed as such, but 
>>>choosing a balance of speed, power expenditure, and material lost, which 
>>>minimizes entropy loss and hence maximizes the calculations performable 
>>>with the winnings.  Does it take more energy to rush machinery into 
>>>solar orbit, than the Sun wastes over that time?

>>I remember the results of a calculation someone made (Drexler?) that 
>>taking Jupiter apart would require about 3 Sun-centuries of energy.
>>Even if the Sun is burning 1500 tons of matter to energy per second, it 
>>is still a slow burn rate.
>
>But you're going to have to shut it down eventually - not necessarily take 
>it apart, maybe, but ensure that all that energy goes to perform useful 
>computations.  The only question is how much it pays to do it sooner, 
>rather than later.

This makes the assumption that we can.  David Criswell's thoughts here

http://www.informationblast.com/Star_lifting.html

does not make the case for getting it done quickly.  In fact, lifting one 
percent of the mass would take on the order of 3 million years.

Which does make the case that we better get started soon.  :-)

Of course there might be other ways to damp the fires, but that's outside 
of known physics.

Keith Henson