"There are specific conclusions of practical interest to be drawn from coupling of these reasonable assumptions with the astrophysical and astrochemical structure of the Galaxy. In particular, we suggest that the outer regions of the Galactic disk are most likely locations for advanced SETI targets, and that intelligent communities will tend to migrate outward through the Galaxy as their capacities of information-processing increase, for both thermodynamical and astrochemical reasons."
OK, now we're talking.
2 comments:
The tragedy here is that, by and large, the SETI "intelligentsia" don't want to talk about this stuff . . . because it's tantamount to claiming that ETs might already be here. Can't have that.
Postbiological evolution may present the seventh megatrajectory,
triggered by the emergence of artificial intelligence at least equivalent to the biologically-evolved one, as well as the invention of several key technologies of roughly similar level of complexity and environmental impact, like molecular nanoassembly (Phoenix and Drexler 2004) or stellar uplifting (Criswell 1985)
Seventh megatrajectory? Nanoassembly? Human-level ai? Smells like Singularity ...
Moving on, something I noticed: the article suggests looking for Jupiter Brains. It also mentions a digital perspective; specifically the thermodynamic problems of computing. Thus, SETI should be looking for thermal differences and bigass computers, yah?
This in turn brought to mind Seth Lloyd's "Ultimate Laptop". A primary (to put it mildly!) problem with that theoretical ubercomputer was packaging.
Put the two together and you get something interesting: an extremely advanced alien race could build (or have built) a super-Jovian body around an "ultimate laptop", using the gas giant gravity to hold it together.
I really, really wish that concept was original to me.
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