4 ms·
> and radiate all waste heat toward a black hole (maximum cooling). It's comparatively inefficient to radiate heat into a narrow cone, and there is little adva
by Udo 11y ago
> and radiate all waste heat toward a black hole (maximum cooling).
It's comparatively inefficient to radiate heat into a narrow cone, and there is little advantage to radiating it into a black hole. On the contrary, matter falling into the black hole will form an accretion disk that radiates heat back to you. In order to maximize dissipation, they would simply radiate it away into all directions uniformly.
However, there might be other considerations to take into account here besides physics. It might be important to such an isolated civilization to avoid detection. In that case they would gladly take the hit on efficiency and radiate their heat in narrow cones into the gaps where no nearby stars are located.
> An advanced alien civilization will probably have very low radiation signature. To afford the maximum amount of computation
Maybe. We can't say what the goals are of any advanced civilization. The reason why we like to talk about this specific type of civilization is that they are the type that we can actually look for right now.
But as I said above, if you're an isolationist population of computer brains, it makes sense to go through the effort of avoiding other people showing up on your doorstep. Such a culture might deem it acceptable to invest most of their energy budget into avoiding detection, as opposed to computation only.
- pavel_lishin 11y agoTo bring it back to the parent comment, wouldn't it make sense for such a culture to live near a black hole? All of their waste emissions would be shadowed pretty well by the accretion disk, and other species might avoid the neighborhood in general given that it's not a safe or nice place to be.
- Udo 11y ago> wouldn't it make sense for such a culture to live near a black hole? Technically the black hole doesn't offer anything beyond what a sun of comparable output would offer. > and other species might avoid the neighborhood in general given that it's not a safe or nice place to be True, but the reasons for avoiding close contact with it are also the reasons why building a habitat there is potentially risky. All things being equal, a Mercury-like planet would make a better base for a civilization having those goals: it offers a lot of solar energy, affords some protection from detection by being too close to the star to resolve it as a non-natural heat source, and as opposed to the black hole it's also in a stable environment.
- cousin_it 11y ago> Technically the black hole doesn't offer anything beyond what a sun of comparable output would offer. Low temperature (lower than cosmic background).
- Udo 11y agoIf you're really after those 3 Kelvin, you might be happier selecting a host star that is 3 degrees hotter instead, especially considering the practical efficiencies of heat exchange systems near absolute zero temperatures.
- cousin_it 11y agoIf your computer can operate near the Landauer limit, then cooling it to ~10^-7 K makes computing operations cheaper by a factor of ~10^7. Using a 3 K warmer heat source won't accomplish the same.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago> Technically the black hole doesn't offer anything beyond what a sun of comparable output would offer. Doesn't the accretion disk shit pretty violent radiation?