From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Fri Aug 13 1999 - 11:42:51 MDT
"John Quinley" <jquinley@aros.net> writes:
> You know, I've never really thought about those big planets being brains of
> some sorts. This is really not my expertize, but a reason that these
> civilizations might have went with this design is that, due to the light
> cone, it was the best mechanism to maintain conscious coherence. Perhaps
> there are some cooling issues here, to. Spin the brain so that only part of
> it is actually soaking up sunlight and storing it, while the other part is
> pointed into space. Just some thoughts.
Overall, planet-sized computing systems ("brains") have their
problems. The reason to build them is to get a lot of computing power
for some project or to live in. And you want them compact, since the
speed of light creates such lags relative to the speed of
computing. Cooling is a problem, since the surface scales as the
square of the size while the volume (heat producing) scales as the
cube. You likely need orbiting cooling fins. For my 'Zeus' design I
simply assumed a reflective heat shield in the direction of the
nearest star.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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