Nov 25, 2017 01:20 AM
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/comp...all-asleep
EXCERPT: [...] The Fermi Paradox is the contradiction between the very reasonable surmise that there must be other forms of technologically advanced life out there somewhere in our great galaxy and the complete lack of any evidence for it. [...] the paradox is far from resolved. There are plenty of intriguing theories, though. And some of them hinge on computation.
[...] technologically advanced civilizations may not go gallivanting around the galaxy and instead might prefer to spend their time building giant computing machines of planetary scale [...] The late Robert Bradbury [...proposed...] that advanced civilizations would construct what he called “Matrioshka brains” -- essentially giant supercomputers that surround stars in a series of shells and use the energy of the central star to perform calculations, perhaps for the purpose of keeping the digitally preserved souls of their builders up and running in some post-singularity paradise. Or maybe they’re doing something else with all those gigaflops. In any event, distant Matrioshka brains would be hard to detect.
[...] Like datacenters today, those of advanced spacefaring civilizations would need to dump the waste heat of their computations. [...coolest space environment...] the latest theory [...] which is described in a paper titled “That is not dead which can eternal lie: the aestivation hypothesis for resolving Fermi’s paradox.” [...] those of you who are rusty at Latin need to know that “aestivation” is kind of like hibernation [...] The notion of going to sleep for many billions of years certainly seems odd [...] The universe doesn’t just get colder and colder forever. Eventually some exotic physics comes into play that limits the ultimate cold to 2.6 x 10-30 kelvins. And that should happen in 1,400 billion years, give or take. So any advanced civilization pursuing this aestivation strategy would know when it’s time to end the big sleep.
Could this be the answer to “Where is everybody”? Could they all just be snoozing? It seems preposterous, but Anders and his co-workers take pains to explore the possibility in great detail....
MORE: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/comp...all-asleep
EXCERPT: [...] The Fermi Paradox is the contradiction between the very reasonable surmise that there must be other forms of technologically advanced life out there somewhere in our great galaxy and the complete lack of any evidence for it. [...] the paradox is far from resolved. There are plenty of intriguing theories, though. And some of them hinge on computation.
[...] technologically advanced civilizations may not go gallivanting around the galaxy and instead might prefer to spend their time building giant computing machines of planetary scale [...] The late Robert Bradbury [...proposed...] that advanced civilizations would construct what he called “Matrioshka brains” -- essentially giant supercomputers that surround stars in a series of shells and use the energy of the central star to perform calculations, perhaps for the purpose of keeping the digitally preserved souls of their builders up and running in some post-singularity paradise. Or maybe they’re doing something else with all those gigaflops. In any event, distant Matrioshka brains would be hard to detect.
[...] Like datacenters today, those of advanced spacefaring civilizations would need to dump the waste heat of their computations. [...coolest space environment...] the latest theory [...] which is described in a paper titled “That is not dead which can eternal lie: the aestivation hypothesis for resolving Fermi’s paradox.” [...] those of you who are rusty at Latin need to know that “aestivation” is kind of like hibernation [...] The notion of going to sleep for many billions of years certainly seems odd [...] The universe doesn’t just get colder and colder forever. Eventually some exotic physics comes into play that limits the ultimate cold to 2.6 x 10-30 kelvins. And that should happen in 1,400 billion years, give or take. So any advanced civilization pursuing this aestivation strategy would know when it’s time to end the big sleep.
Could this be the answer to “Where is everybody”? Could they all just be snoozing? It seems preposterous, but Anders and his co-workers take pains to explore the possibility in great detail....
MORE: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/comp...all-asleep
