Matrioshka brain
A Matrioshka brain is a star wrapped in nested shells of computers, each running on the heat the shell inside throws away. The physics says the extra shells barely help.
In 1997 Robert J. Bradbury asked how much computing a whole star could power. His answer was Dyson spheres nested like Russian dolls: the innermost shell computes hot on starlight, and each shell outside it runs on the waste heat of the one within. The prize is vast: the Sun emits more than 100 trillion times the electricity humanity produces. Yet an analysis of the thermodynamics found the extra shells add little or nothing. The material generally does more as small, hot spheres.
Sources
- Wright, Thermodynamics of Radiation Applied to Dyson Spheres as Computational Engines (arXiv)
- Wright, Dyson Spheres as Work Extractors and Computational Engines, full text (arXiv)
- Wikipedia, Matrioshka brain
- Google Research, Exploring a space-based, scalable AI infrastructure system design
- Towards a future space-based, highly scalable AI infrastructure system design (arXiv)
- Scharf & Witkowski, Rebuilding the Habitable Zone with Computational Zones (arXiv)
- Project Hephaistos II, Dyson sphere candidates from Gaia DR3, 2MASS and WISE (arXiv)
- Background Contamination of the Project Hephaistos Candidates (arXiv)
- Lacki, Type III Societies (Apparently) Do Not Exist (arXiv)
- Lloyd, Ultimate physical limits to computation (arXiv)
- Bostrom, Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?
Read next
- Fermi paradoxThe Fermi paradox: life elsewhere looks likely, yet the universe we observe looks empty. Enrico Fermi, whose name it carries, never published a word about it.
- Kardashev scaleThe Kardashev scale ranks civilizations by the power they control: Type I about Earth's own, Type II a star's, Type III a galaxy's. By Kardashev's own threshold, humanity is past Type I.
- XenobotsXenobots are living machines built from frog embryo cells to shapes designed by AI. Set among loose cells, they shove them into piles that grow into new xenobots.
