From: kevin.osborne (kevin.osborne@gmail.com)
Date: Thu Jan 04 2007 - 21:03:41 MST
in terms of solar energy and computational limits, I'm a little
sceptical. if string theory pans out I'm imagining we'll be generating
our own little mini-suns quite happily by pricking at the little
buggers and the wha-gumpingly massive-yet-small dimensions they're
operating within; there could also be a string-level equivalent of
fission/fusion which would be just as energy rich a transition as the
one from tnt to nuclear. add into that the computing power increase in
moving from bits to qubits to string-states and some wishful thinking
that we'll start keeping & re-using existing computational results &
processes at some point and I think any upper hard-limit on
computation/energy will be just as weak as every other upper limit
broken by the ongoing technological frogmarch.
something else which is a bit interesting (and closer to my original
topic): http://planetquest1.jpl.nasa.gov/atlas/atlas_search.cfm
so the current closest known planets are current 10 light years away.
this is a ridiculous distance in a chemical rocket, but maybe
notsomuch in an antimatter drive getting up to 1/4 light speed or
whatever the physics boffins manage to come up with in the next 25
years or so. could well be that we could have a probe on a likely
exoplanet by century end, especially if we discover planets even
closer with this new-fangled sat.
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