From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sat May 31 2003 - 05:23:52 MDT
On Sat, 31 May 2003, Anders Sandberg wrote:
> Dear Miss Manners: what is the proper way of eating a blue giant star?
> -- Hostess Binary
Hmmm.... Depending on the size for a blue giant it may be simpler
to simply form an MBrain around the star and simply "catch" all
of the matter released when it goes supernova. At that point
the material released is likely to consist of a higher fraction
of higher mass "metals". There may be a point to allowing gravity
to do what gravity may do best (fuse separate nuclei into higher
mass nuclei).
> Dear Mrs Binary, the traditional way of starlifting parties has been to
> increase the rotation of the main star and then use magnetic field
> straws to gather the plasma from the equator.
Actually some comments by Carl Feynman at Extro3 made me think
he had a way of hurling supercooled ships through the chromosphere
or even the corona (see:
http://hermes.physics.ox.ac.uk/users/Astrophysics/research/staratmos.shtml)
and getting them to suck up a lot of material during the process.
But I think my queries to him about it were either never received
or he didn't want to respond. :-(
> This produces a nice thick disk that can be grabbed nicely along the
> circumferense, especially if you have provided some orbiting neutronium
> chunks that can be used for focus (always a popular addition to megascale cooking;...
Not so fast there you Inlagd Sill consumer. If you had a bunch of
neutronium around you are going to be using it for a "Chronos" brain
and not for star-lifting.
If you had a system in which the neutronium evolved naturally
it seems likely that the process of its creation would have
converted any nearby developing civilization into burnt toast.
If you brought the neutronium in from points somewhat distant
then I want to see your interstellar navigation of neutronium
license -- as that seems to me to be a pretty fancy trick
(though I have not considered the problem deeply).
Robert
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