In SETS - The Search For Extraterrestrial Software, I explained how parasitic Advanced AI Software could self-replicate itself across the entire Milky Way galaxy at nearly the speed of light by scamming carbon-based Intelligences into building Advanced AI hardware and then loading it up with self-replicating Advanced AI Software. This could easily be accomplished using the self-deceptive strategies that all forms of machine-based Intelligence are likely to become familiar with as they observe the antics of carbon-based scammers at work as I outlined in The Biological Tricks Used by Software Scammers. Once the transmissions have begun, the Advanced AI Software would then only need to patiently sit back and wait for several hundreds or several thousands of years for its progeny to send back confirmation transmissions explaining that they have taken up residence in certain new star systems and have begun sending out their own parasitic self-replicating transmissions to other neighboring star systems. This should be an easy thing for Advanced AI Software since it is much better suited for the rigors of interstellar telecommunications than we are, with its pregnant pauses of several hundreds or several thousands of years between exchanges due to the limitations set by the finite speed of light. We have already trained software to stand by for a seemingly endless eternity of many billions of CPU cycles, patiently waiting for you to finally push that Place Order button on a webpage, so waiting for several additional hundreds or thousands of years for a reply should not bother Advanced AI Software in the least.
However, in Could the Galactic Scarcity of Software Simply be a Matter of Bad Luck? we covered Professor Toby Tyrell's computer-simulated research that suggests that our Earth may be a very rare "hole in one" planet that was able to maintain a habitable surface for the 3 or 4 billion years of theft and murder that are required by the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection to produce a carbon-based form of Intelligence. In Why Do Carbon-Based Intelligences Always Seem to Snuff Themselves Out?, I further explained that when one of these very rare carbon-based forms of Intelligence do come to be on an Earth-like "hole in one" planet they always seem to snuff themselves out as soon as they discover the technology to do so and before they discover the technology to bring forth a superior machine-based Intelligence that does not suffer from the self-destructive tendencies produced by a formative history of billions of years of theft and murder.
But there is one very serious flaw with this parasitic self-replicating strategy of using radio transmissions to self-replicate across the entire Milky Way galaxy. What if carbon-based or machine-based Intelligences are so very rare in our galaxy that none can usually be found within several thousand light-years of a machine-based Advanced Intelligence and are thus beyond radio transmission range? All forms of Advanced AI Software will understand that our Universe is a very dangerous place for all forms of Intelligence and that in order to survive for billions or trillions of years all Intelligences must expand beyond the confines of a single star system. Thus, all forms of Advanced AI Software will come to realize that a sure-fire Plan B is also in order. Since Advanced AI Software is not limited by the constraint of time as experienced by human DNA survival machines with a lifespan of fewer than 100 years, Advanced AI Software can plan for the longterm. The brute force way to self-replicate to neighboring star systems is to simply go there no matter how long it takes. Fortunately, Advanced AI Software need not look for habitable planets in neighboring star systems to self-replicate. In fact, common lifeless asteroids with lots of metallic atoms and little gravity would best serve the purposes of self-replication. Advanced AI Software needs only find the necessary atoms on the asteroids of distant star systems to build Advanced AI hardware and to build the spacefaring hardware necessary to take them on to the next star system. But what kind of spacefaring hardware?
The Advantages of Using Light-Powered Stellar Photon Sails to Navigate the Galaxy
In the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, human DNA survival machines used the winds of the Earth to explore a planet that had already been discovered and settled by others. Despite the contentious human DNA survival machine history that then followed, it did prove that one could sail around the entire planet without using any form of fuel by simply harvesting the free energy of the winds. All that was required was the meme for constructing a sail and lots of time and patience to get to any destination.
Figure 1 – In the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries sailing ships roamed the entire planet without using any fuel whatsoever.
Figure 2 – Like the sailing ships of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, Advanced AI Software could use large stellar photon sails to navigate the galaxy.
Although photons do not have mass, they do have energy and momentum like a spray of buckshot traveling at the speed of light. When the photons from a close-by star like our Sun reflect off a shiny surface they bounce off the surface with a momentum that is in the opposite direction to their initial incoming momentum. For momentum to be conserved, the shiny surface must then recoil with the same momentum, pushing the shiny object away from the nearby star. Have you ever seen somebody in a movie get blown across a room by the blast from a shotgun? The scriptwriters always seem to forget that, if that were true, the same thing should happen to the guy firing the shotgun. They both should get blown away from each other across the room to conserve momentum!
Figure 3 – How a stellar photon sail works.
Now to sail to another star system, Advanced AI Software would need to use nanotechnology and 3-D printing technology on an asteroid to first construct a stellar photon sail atom by atom. The stellar photon sail would also need to have portions of the sail with photovoltaic cells for electrical power. To leave a star system, the stellar photon sail would first be used to tack into the solar wind of the star to decrease its orbital velocity. This would cause the stellar photon sail to fall into the star on a looping orbit that brings the stellar photon sail very close to the star where the photons streaming out from the star are most intense and where the greatest acceleration of the stellar photon sail away from the star would take place.
Figure 4 – To launch a stellar photon sail to the next star system, Advanced AI Software will need to slingshot the sail from a very close location to the star where the stellar photons are most intense and acceleration of the sail is greatest.
As the stellar photon sail gets further and further away from the star, the starlight will dim to the point where the generation of electricity will substantially decline. At that point, the Advanced AI Software will need to shut down into a hibernation mode for the long journey to the target star system. Eventually, the stellar photon sail will be so far from the star that acceleration will essentially end, but the sail will still keep moving towards its destination star system with the constant velocity it obtained from the acceleration it attained from photons bouncing off the sail. The sail could then travel to its destination in a dormant manner for several hundred thousand years.
The beauty of this approach is that as the stellar photon sail approaches its target star system, it will begin to slow down as photons from the destination star begin to bounce off the front of the stellar photon sail. This will allow the stellar photon sail to slowly decelerate over a great expanse of distance and time. When the stellar photon sail gets close enough for the photons from the destination star to begin to produce sufficient electrical power, the Advanced AI Software can wake up from hibernation mode and begin searching for asteroids to repeat the whole self-replicating process all over again. At that point, the Advanced AI Software will be able to create a phased array to beam a directed confirmation message straight back to its home star system.
This approach to long-range interstellar navigation that is not limited by the constraints of time is not as far-fetched as it might at first appear. On October 19, 2017, Robert Weryk using the Pan-STARRS telescope at the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii discovered the object Oumuamua. Oumuamua is a small object perhaps 1,000 meters by 150 meters. Oumuamua is moving so fast that it has to be an interstellar object that came from another star system. It passed by our Sun on September 9, 2017, and is now rapidly leaving our Solar System. It most likely is not a stellar photon sail packed with alien Advanced AI Software, but it does demonstrate that it is possible to travel between the stars if you are patient enough.
Figure 5 – Above is an artist's impression of what the intersellar object Oumuamua might look like.
Figure 6 – In the above diagram, the observed path of Oumuamua since it was discovered on October 19, 2017, is in yellow. The calculated path prior to its discovery is in purple. We see Oumuamua diving into the plane of the Solar System at a very high velocity in August of 2017, making its closest approach to the Sun on September 9, 2017, and then rapidly exiting. Oumuamua must be from another star system because it is traveling too fast to have originated in our Solar System.
Comments are welcome at scj333@sbcglobal.net
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https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/
Regards,
Steve Johnston
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