From: Anders Sandberg (nv91-asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Feb 11 1997 - 09:18:23 MST
On Mon, 10 Feb 1997, The Low Willow wrote:
> a megayear so that everyone else can mosey over. Possibly more time if
> the organizers are doing something fancy. One idea I'd had was a
> Kemplerer rosette of stars, each with a habitable planet, each with a
> new intelligent species on it. This would be a party for the Powers who
> really feel godlike and superior.
Sounds great! I would like to participate in the species design (hmm,
they will definitely have a "meaning of life"). The rosette design would
need to involve some stabilization systems, to keep it in shape (it is so
embarassing with broken symmetries - but wait, wouldn't it make some
spectacular fireworks if we made a few stars collide at the end?!).
> [1] A Dyson sphere powering a radio, of course. Robin claimed (in a
> different conversation) that this could be intergalactically visible,
> unless he was talking about a galaxy-powered radio.
For the sun, you have around 10^26 W to play with, I think it would
definitely be intergalactically visible if you used a directed beam.
> [2] I think gravity-tethered solar sails should work. Huge sails at the
> height where they're supported by radiation, and inflecting most of the
> light back around (not at) the star. Photons go one way, something has
> to go the other, and if the sails can be kept stable over the star, both
> star and sail should slowly glide off.
The trick is to get the gravitational coupling to work - otherwise you get
sails moving away from the star. Ideally the sails are heavy, just to drag
the star along. But I think we could use the energy to induce flares on
only one side instead or create a stellar laser, that ought to speed
things up.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
nv91-asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/main.html
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:44:09 MST