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Space probe porn

Why we’re still alone

Various SETI efforts — the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence inside our galaxy, bien sur — have been ongoing for thirty years, with no success yet. If there’s intelligent life out there, we haven’t been able to detect it with our arrays of radio telescopes and funky parallel-processing screensavers.

But what if we’re simply looking in the wrong place? SETI projects tend to look for intelligent civilizations near stars, under the assumption that those energy sources are crucial to life. But in an interesting new paper (of which the PDF is here), the astronomers Milan M. Circovic and Robert J. Bradbury argue that any long-lasting intelligent civilizations will have intensive information-processing needs, and indeed may “be” information, having hit the Singularity and uploaded their consciousnesses into the aether. In that case, the authors suggest, alien civilizations would head out to the frozen outer regions of the Milky Way — where information-processing would be easier for thermodynamic reasons.

As far as I can make it out, the argument goes like this: Any computer, in the act of doing computation, generates heat and needs to be cooled down with a heat reservoir. Obviously, a civilization composed of information will be doing a monster truckload of computation. Thus, as the authors argue:

In the ideal case, no energy should be expended on cooling the computer itself, since that expense should be added to the energy cost … The most efficient heat reservoir is the universe itself, which far from local energy sources like stars and galaxies, has the temperature of the cosmic microwave background. [Italics in original]

If they’re right, we need to radically rethink our SETI strategy.

Heh. I love that sentence. “We need to radically rethink our SETI strategy.” I think I just won some sort of Blog Pompousness Award.

(Thanks to Robots.net for this one!)


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I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.

Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!

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Recent Entries

The “Milky Way Transit Authority” map

Should automobile software be open-sourced?

My Bookforum review of Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not A Gadget”

Molecular secrets of the “iron-plated snail”

Garry Kasparov, cyborg

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a bunch of stuff

January 31, 2010 » 07:29 PM
V. A. To me death seems to be an evil.
M. What, to those who are al­ready dead? or to those who must die?
A. To both.
M. It is a mis­ery, then, be­cause an evil?
A. Cer­tain­ly.
M. Then those who have al­ready died, and those who have still got to die, are both mis­er­able?
A. So it ap­pears to me.
M. Then all are mis­er­able?
A. Ev­ery one.

January 24, 2010 » 03:22 PM

One of the more interesting trends is family, which came in at number five. Specifically, discussion about family, moms, dads, daughters, etc. jumped during 2009. With Facebook users getting older, this isn’t a big surprise. However, the fact that the mention of “kids” jumped by a factor of five this year is rather dramatic. It’s tough to know what this means, though. (via Facebook Unveils Most-Mentioned Topics of 2009

)

January 15, 2010 » 01:36 PM

BEYOND AWESOME. They are announcing a recall of the Plush Uterus “due to a potential choking hazard for children”. To apply for it, “Please send an email to the address below with the subject line, ‘UTERUS OPT OUT’”.

January 14, 2010 » 10:04 PM

“To order, please TYPE “YES” IN CHECKBOX BELOW TO AGREE YOU UNDERSTAND THIS PLUSH MUST BE KEPT AWAY FROM KIDS (it is a sex organ, after all). If it is not checked, WE WILL NOT SEND THE UTERUS.” (via @ibogost)

January 11, 2010 » 01:45 PM

I watched Space: 1999 back in the day, but I swear to god I do not remember this scene.

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Collision Detection: A Blog by Clive Thompson