"Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@www.aeiveos.com> writes:
> On Sun, 22 Aug 1999, John Clark wrote:
> >
> > Tipler found a solution in General Relativity that shows that an
> > infinitely long, extremely dense cylinder made of Neutronium (the stuff of
> > Neutron Stars)
>
> Aha, I'll invoke the "Use of Magic Physics" warning when people use
> terms like "infinitely long", "infinitely dense", "negative mass",
> etc.!!! Only half :-).
Some people think that it would work with just a long cylinder, not just an infinitely long one. But solving the GR equations in this case doesn't work analytically, and keeping the darn cylinder from collapsing into a ball and then a black hole are tricky problems.
I'll take a look at the proton-neutronium stuff, I just borrowed a *wonderful* book on astrophysics (_Introduction to Modern Astrophysics_ by Bradley W. Carroll and Dale A. Ostlie) from the library that has some good stuff on neutron stars (not enough IMHO, but still). I actually spent a suspenseful evening reading about stellar physics - who needs mystery novels when there are convection currents in carbon stars? :-)
> And as an interesting postscript...
>
> One by one the stars blinked and went out as the SIs
> hurled black holes across the voids of space seeking to
> destroy each others fuel sources. The fuel that powered
> the future modelling computers was essential for the
> prediction of paths that would avoid the ever increasing
> density of black holes that slowly drained the intelligence
> from the the universe. Far far away, in a quiet corner,
> the Anders SI and the Robert SI were watching...,
> waiting..., knowing that one day those black holes
> would have to evaporate, providing enough energy to
> live again. They slept while the universe fell slowly
> into darkness.
...both dreaming of catnip and interdimensional mice. For Nick was right, all sufficiently advanced intelligences do converge to something similar: cats. :-)
Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y