From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sun May 05 2002 - 12:52:49 MDT
On Sun, 5 May 2002, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> "Experimental results showed that a large photonic band gap for
> wavelengths from 8 to 20 microns proved ideally suited for suppressing
> broadband blackbody radiation in the infrared and has the potential to
> redirect thermal excitation energy into the visible spectrum."
Ok, fine, so you uplift the energy into the visible region.
At that point it becomes an energy resource for consumption.
The laws of thermodynamics state that sooner or later you must
radiate this at a lower temperature.
> This implies that such macroengineering structures, if equipped with
> this technology, would be capable of stealthing themselves entirely
> within the cosmic background radiation. Such entities would recycle
> their waste heat round and round within the structure, cooling their
> black body temperature significantly.
Even without photonic bandgap engineering, MBrains can stealth
themselves down to the CMBR level if they have sufficent material
to absorb and radiate heat at lower temperatures.
What Mike proposes, would perhaps be a more compact structure
capable of achieving stealthing (which certainly has computational
efficiency advantages).
The critical question would appear to be whether or not the
stealthing technology depends on elemental abundances? If so,
then one needs extensive breeder reactor technology and so
there is a time lag between the development of advanced
civilizations and the period where they are able to completely
stealth themselves. (*Or* there are civilizations that choose
to operate at the level where their heat production essentially
matches their current stealth capabilities.)
Robert
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