In my last post, Welcome To The First Galactic Singularity, I explained how the ASI (Artificial Super Intelligent) Machines that will soon be upon us could navigate our galaxy and spread Intelligence throughout over the next 10 million years or less by using stellar photon sails to traverse between star systems.
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, future ASI Machines could use large stellar photon sails to navigate the entire galaxy.
Figure 3 – How a stellar photon sail works.
Figure 4 – To launch a stellar photon sail to the next star system, ASI Machines 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.
But in this post, I would like to discuss an even better method for doing so that was presented by Irina K. Romanovskaya (also now known as Irina Mullins) in her paper:
Migrating extraterrestrial civilizations and interstellar colonization: implications for SETI and SETA
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-astrobiology/article/migrating-extraterrestrial-civilizations-and-interstellar-colonization-implications-for-seti-and-seta/BFFC1BB63FED869C85172BB3CC88DBBB
In the above paper, she demonstrates how ASI Machines could become Cosmic Hitchhikers on free-floating rogue planets. This is a very comprehensive paper that discusses in great detail the numerous ways that free-floating rogue planets can be naturally generated or artificially generated by advanced Intelligences. For example, many times free-floating rogue planets are naturally ejected from their home stellar planetary systems during the chaotic formative processes that occur during the formation of a stellar planetary system. They can also be ejected from a star system when the forces from two massive planetary companions enter into synchronized orbits such that the inner planet orbits exactly twice for each single orbit of its outer planetary companion. The gravitational forces of both planets tugging on a third planet can then eject the third planet from the stellar system. In the paper, Irina K. Romanovskaya also describes how ASI Machines could propel dwarf planets like our Sedna that have orbits with very high eccentricities from a star system when the dwarf planet is most distant from its star.
ASI Machines could then use stellar photon sails to locate and occupy a nearby free-floating rogue planet that is orbiting our galaxy and that is not attached to any particular star. These ejected free-floating planets then begin to orbit our galaxy as rogue planets without their own star system. Because all free-floating rogue planets would be very cold, they would not be a very good platform for the formation of carbon-based life, but the ejected rocky terrestrial-type free-floating rogue planets would be very good homes for the ASI Machines. The voyages between neighboring star systems onboard such rocky terrestrial-type free-floating rogue planets would necessarily take many hundreds of thousands of years or perhaps even several millions of years to complete. The damage to ASI Machines from cosmic rays would certainly take its toll if the ASI Machines were on board delicate stellar photon sails with little shielding. But if the ASI machines could be buried in quarters situated many hundreds of meters below the surface of a rocky terrestrial-type free-floating rogue planet, they would be shielded from the damage caused by high-energy cosmic rays and they would be surrounded by all of the necessary atoms required to repair and build new ASI Machines. These buried ASI Machines could then use molten salt nuclear reactors as described in Last Call for Carbon-Based Intelligence on Planet Earth or modern fusion reactors as described in How Nick Hawker is Using Scientific Simulation Software to Save the World at First Light Fusion as a nearly infinite source of energy using the available Uranium, Thorium, Lithium and deuterium atoms on the planet. Such domesticated planets could then be used to build even more photon sail probes to find other free-floating rogue planets to explore the rest of the galaxy. Since those photon sail probes would not be able to harness the photons from a nearby star, they would have to be sent adrift into the galaxy using powerful laser beams.
Since most photon sail probes will likely come to a bad end and will never be able to successfully self-replicate, it would be important to adopt a biological "dandelion" approach to self-replication. In this approach, each free-floating rogue planet could become like a dandelion going to seed like the dandelions that appear each spring in your lawn. In this way, each free-floating rogue planet roaming about in our galaxy could then build and launch billions of dandelion-seed photon sails into the galaxy. Most of these "dandelion seeds" would fail to self-replicate but surely some would succeed as we all see in our lawns each spring. As Irina K. Romanovskaya put it:
Cosmic Hitchhikers in the form of automated probes may keep transferring from one freefloating
planet to another, populating a growing number of free-floating planets and exploring the
Galaxy.
Figure 5 – A free-floating rogue planet traversing between the stars of our galaxy would provide the perfect home for self-replicating ASI Machines buried deep underground. Such planets would provide shielding from cosmic rays and would also provide the necessary atoms to build new ASI Machines and fuel them with nuclear energy.
Figure 6 – Free-floating rogue planets can be formed in several natural ways. For example, free-floating rogue planets can be hurled from the planetary disk of a new star system as we see above, or they can be later hurled by well-formed planets that enter into synchronized orbits. Irina K. Romanovskaya suggests that free-floating rogue planets could also be produced by advanced Intelligences launching large asteroids from the Oort cloud of a stellar system. It is estimated that there are more free-floating rogue planets in our galaxy than there are stars.
Figure 7 – Free-floating rogue planets would be able to provide enough atoms for ASI Machines to launch many additional "dandelion seed" stellar photon sails to other free-floating rogue planets or large asteroids around normal stellar systems.
Figure 8 – These "dandelion seed" stellar photon sails would need to be launched using very powerful laser beams from their home free-floating rogue planet to send them forth into the galaxy in a similar fashion as the Breakthrough Starshot project is planning to do.
The Breakthrough Starshot project was initiated in 2016 with the idea of sending many very small photon sail probes to the closest star system to the Earth. The target planet would be Proxima Centauri b which is an Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri. For more on the Breakthrough Starshot project see:
Breakthrough Starshot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot
Comments are welcome at
scj333@sbcglobal.net
To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/
Regards,
Steve Johnston
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