SETI/ASTRO: MBrains/JBrains & Globular Clusters

From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sun Jul 15 2001 - 19:14:41 MDT


Alternate Subject Line:
  [The Universe dishes out spin control for Bradbury & Broderick]

As some of you know, Damien took some of my early speculations
on where one might construct Matrioshka Brains, Jupiter Brains,
etc. and wrote them up in the latest edition of "The Spike".
During my early development of the "Matrioshka Brain" ideas,
I had made some rather "loose" arguments that they
might choose to locate themselves in globular clusters.

Subsequent thinking (along the lines of why would we still
see stars in globular clusters?) caused me to question this
early perspective. This line of thinking became even more
depressing when a Hubble Space Telescope search of the globular
cluster 47 Tucanae last year revealed no "planets".

However, keeping in mind one of my good day sayings "patience
is a virtue that does not oft go unrewarded", the Universe
has just offered up results of the survey of the M22 globular
cluster that seem to trump the previous results.

According to a JPL press release, "dark objects" may make
up as much as 10%(!) of the mass of M22, yet they could be
as small as 80x the mass of the Earth.

At any rate, I've written up a brief discussion:
  http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/MatrioshkaBrains/GCaA.html

Comments, additional references, etc. should be sent directly
to me.

On a clear day, I can see forever...
Robert



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