[ExI] Wrath of the Old Ones

Tomaz Kristan protokol2020 at gmail.com
Tue Apr 28 06:30:28 UTC 2015


The following I'd like to add.

It shouldn't be that difficult to stop the life popping up and evolving
everywhere around. Extinguishing stars should suffice. Even those fishes,
crabs and so on, around the deep ocean thermal vents are heavily sponsored
by oxygen from photosynthesis. They are not independent at all! Contrary to
what we are listening all the time, especially regarding Europa.

Life is rather difficult.

On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 8:06 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki <
rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:

> Some time ago we talked here about banking matter for future use when
> ultralow cosmic background greatly magnifies its usefulness for
> computations. Now I am wondering what kind of approach would the Old Ones
> use to prevent weeds from sprouting among the galaxies they tend to.
>
> At first glance, I would think they would simply extinguish stars and
> possibly store matter in containers too small to trigger nuclear fusion but
> large enough to be gravitationally stable. When the time comes, in 10e100
> years, they would awaken, and haul the frozen carcasses to the remaining
> black holes, and carefully stoke quasar fires again. But how do you prevent
> rapacious little critters from crawling out of every damp piece of rock
> every couple of billion years or so?
>
> It's worth noting that simply snuffing out stars won't stop initiation of
> life. Life on Earth most likely started from an energy source independent
> of the sunlight - from proton concentration gradients in alkaline seeps,
> powered by serpentinization of peridotite. Surely there are many other
> potential energy gradients that can power pre-biotic evolution.
>
> Keeping tabs on the world over eons will be a tall order. The Old Ones
> would need unfailing will, an unwavering commitment through the long night,
> absolute unity, since factionalism would almost certainly devolve into ever
> shorter term fights over resources. The would need to stay lean, so as not
> to use up negentropy too quickly but not too lean to swat emerging bipeds
> pronto. Any parasite capable of boosting its von Neumann spores to high
> sublight speeds could spread appallingly fast, and promptly convert the
> stored matter into yet more parasites.
>
> The coming night, in mere 10 - 20 billions of years, will be the canvas of
> titanic struggles among grim forces acting over trillion-year horizons.
>
> Rafał
>
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>


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