From: Wei Dai (weidai@eskimo.com)
Date: Wed Jan 09 2002 - 18:20:51 MST
On Wed, Jan 09, 2002 at 03:49:52PM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote:
> You can fuse iron atoms, but the reaction is endothermic. So when this
> happens, the star core cools. There are other nuclear processes
> involving iron too, and all are endothermic and hence tend to cool the
> star, causing it to compress.
>
> We better learn to use iron for nanomachines, because that is what we
> are going to end up with.
Or we can learn how to fully convert matter into energy, and use the
energy to transmutate iron into more desirable elements. According to this
web page by the French atomic energy commission,
(http://www.cea.fr/Clefs/Clefs44/an-clefs44/clefs4493a.html) we
can potentially do matter-to-energy conversion by catalytic conversion of
matter into antimatter, or by creating a small black hole and capturing
its Hawking radiation as it evaporates.
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