How to Take Over the Universe (in Three Easy Steps)
Summary
TLDRThis script outlines a theoretical plan to conquer the cosmos using three main steps: constructing a Dyson swarm for energy, developing self-replicating probes, and launching them to propagate across galaxies. It posits that with modest energy from the sun and plausible future technologies, humanity could exponentially expand its reach across the universe, raising intriguing questions about the Fermi paradox and the potential existence of extraterrestrial civilizations.
Takeaways
- 🌌 The script outlines a hypothetical three-step plan to take over the universe by harnessing the sun's energy and deploying self-replicating probes.
- 🔆 A Dyson swarm, composed of solar collectors, is proposed as the primary energy source for the project, which would be built by disassembling the planet Mercury.
- 🚀 The plan involves the creation of self-replicating probes that can land on other planets or asteroids and use local resources to replicate themselves and build additional Dyson swarms.
- 🛰️ The probes would be launched to every reachable galaxy, potentially reaching between 116 million to 4 billion galaxies, depending on their speed.
- 🕊️ The expansion method is considered more efficient than sequential colonization within the Milky Way, as it can be done simultaneously across vast distances.
- ⚙️ The feasibility of the plan is based on the principles of exploratory engineering, which assumes that any natural process can be replicated with human technology.
- 🤖 Automation is a key component, suggesting that the scale of the project could be managed without direct human labor through the use of advanced AI and robotics.
- 🔬 The script is based on a paper by Stuart Armstrong and Anders Sandberg, which explores the physical possibility and plausibility of intergalactic spreading of intelligent life.
- 🔢 The paper makes several conservative assumptions about the efficiency of solar collectors, the energy required for material processing, and the time needed to complete the Dyson swarm.
- 🛡️ The design of the probes includes considerations for deceleration, fuel type, data storage, and potential protective measures against intergalactic hazards.
- 💡 The Fermi paradox is sharpened by the paper's argument that intergalactic colonization should be feasible with minimal resources, yet we see no signs of extraterrestrial projects.
- 🏁 The script concludes with a call to action, suggesting that humanity should begin its expansion into the universe to claim galaxies before they become forever out of reach or are claimed by others.
Q & A
What is the main goal of the video script?
-The main goal of the video script is to outline a theoretical plan for humanity to take over the universe in three steps, using a Dyson swarm and self-replicating probes.
What is a Dyson swarm and why is it proposed in the script?
-A Dyson swarm is a multitude of solar collectors orbiting the sun, designed to capture solar energy. It is proposed to power the launch of self-replicating probes to other galaxies.
How does the script suggest we obtain the energy needed for the Dyson swarm?
-The script suggests using the sun's energy by building a Dyson swarm, which would collect and convert solar radiation into useful work.
What are the three steps mentioned in the script for taking over the universe?
-The three steps are: 1) Disassemble Mercury and build a Dyson swarm, 2) Build self-replicating probes, and 3) Launch these probes to every reachable galaxy.
Why is Mercury chosen for disassembling in the script?
-Mercury is chosen because it is a rocky planet with a composition of 70% metal and 30% silicate, which can be transformed into reflective surfaces for the Dyson swarm, and it is conveniently located near the swarm's intended orbit.
What is the concept of 'exploratory engineering' mentioned in the script?
-Exploratory engineering refers to the process of reasoning about what techniques and designs are physically possible and plausibly achievable by human scientists, without necessarily having the technology at hand.
What assumptions does the script make regarding the replication of natural processes and automation?
-The script assumes that any process in the natural world can be replicated with human technology and that any task that can be performed can be automated, especially with advances in AI.
How does the script address the Fermi paradox in relation to its proposed plan?
-The script suggests that since spreading through the universe doesn't require a lot of resources, the lack of observed alien colonization implies that either there is no other intelligent life, or they might already be expanding through the universe.
What are the potential methods for deceleration of the self-replicating probes as proposed in the script?
-The script hypothesizes three types of fuel for deceleration: nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, and matter-antimatter annihilation. It also mentions other speculative options like using gravitational assists, magnetic sails, or the Bussard ramjet.
What is the estimated timeframe for completing the Dyson swarm according to the script?
-Under the assumptions made in the script, the disassembly of Mercury and completion of the Dyson swarm would take approximately 31 years, with most of the mass being harvested in the last four years.
How does the script suggest we could launch the self-replicating probes?
-The script suggests using fixed launch systems like coilguns, solar sails accelerated by lasers, or particle beams instead of rockets, to achieve the necessary acceleration to relativistic speeds.
Outlines
🌌 Galactic Conquest: The Dyson Swarm Initiative
The script introduces an ambitious three-step plan to take over the universe, starting with the construction of a Dyson swarm by disassembling Mercury to harness solar energy. This energy will then be used to build self-replicating probes, which are to be launched into every reachable galaxy. The video emphasizes the efficiency of this method, suggesting that expanding to the furthest galaxies is no more difficult than to the nearest ones, just more time-consuming. It references the paper by Stuart Armstrong and Anders Sandberg, which explores the feasibility of intergalactic spreading of intelligent life and its implications on the Fermi paradox.
🛠️ Engineering the Dyson Swarm: Mercury Disassembly and Automation
This paragraph delves into the practicalities of disassembling Mercury to create a Dyson swarm, a network of solar collectors around the sun. It discusses the energy requirements for launching millions to billions of probes and the advantages of a swarm over a rigid Dyson sphere. The script suggests using lightweight mirrors for the swarm and calculates the mass and surface area needed based on Mercury's orbit and mass. It also introduces the concept of an exponential feedback loop for mining and assembling the swarm, highlighting the importance of automation in managing the scale of this project.
🚀 Designing Self-Replicating Probes for Universal Expansion
The script outlines the design considerations for self-replicating probes capable of landing on planets, using local resources to replicate, and initiating new waves of probes to spread across galaxies. It draws parallels between natural replicators and the proposed probes, discussing size limitations and data storage options. The paragraph also explores potential fuel sources for deceleration, including nuclear fission, fusion, and matter-antimatter annihilation, and considers methods to protect probes from intergalactic dust at high speeds.
🔋 Launching the Probes: Energy Requirements and Timescales
This section discusses the energy needed to launch the self-replicating probes using a fixed launch system, such as coilguns or solar sails, as opposed to rockets. It provides a table showing the time required to power the launch based on different probe and replicator types, emphasizing that even with a large number of probes, the energy needed is minimal compared to the Dyson swarm's capacity. The script also contemplates the strategic sequence of launching probes within the Milky Way and other galaxies, considering the universe's expansion and the urgency of beginning this expansion.
🌟 The Future of Humanity: Colonizing the Universe and the Fermi Paradox
The final paragraph envisions a future where humanity initiates the colonization of the universe, with a playful scenario of a Solar System President asking everyone to turn off their virtual reality for a brief period to focus on this grand endeavor. It discusses the timeline for the probes to reach millions to billions of galaxies and the implications of the Fermi paradox, suggesting that the lack of visible alien colonization efforts might indicate the absence of other intelligent life or that they are already here. The script concludes by urging humanity to seize the opportunity to expand into the universe before it's too late.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Dyson Swarm
💡Self-replicating Probes
💡Exploratory Engineering
💡Fermi Paradox
💡Cosmically Insignificant
💡Mercury Disassembly
💡Exponential Feedback Loop
💡Intergalactic Spreading
💡Molecular Assembler
💡Coilgun
💡Expansion of the Universe
Highlights
A three-step plan to take over the universe using a Dyson swarm and self-replicating probes.
The concept of harnessing the sun's energy for an intergalactic expansion strategy.
Disassembling Mercury to build solar collectors for a Dyson swarm as a resource-efficient method.
The efficiency of using self-replicating probes for simultaneous expansion across galaxies.
The theoretical underpinnings of the paper by Stuart Armstrong and Anders Sandberg on intergalactic spreading.
Assumptions of exploratory engineering for plausible and physically possible interstellar technologies.
The advantages of a Dyson swarm over a rigid Dyson sphere in terms of construction and maintenance.
The calculation of material needed from Mercury to construct solar collectors for the Dyson swarm.
The exponential feedback loop for the construction of the Dyson swarm through mining and energy generation.
Automation's role in the large-scale construction and operation of the Dyson swarm and probes.
Estimations of time and energy required to complete the Dyson swarm based on conservative assumptions.
Design considerations for self-replicating probes including size, data storage, and fuel for deceleration.
Hypothetical fuel sources for probe deceleration: nuclear fission, fusion, and matter-antimatter annihilation.
Strategies for probe protection against intergalactic dust and the use of redundancy to ensure arrival.
Fixed launch systems as an efficient method for propelling probes to relativistic speeds.
The timeline for the universe's expansion and the urgency for humanity to begin intergalactic colonization.
The Fermi paradox implications and the potential existence of extraterrestrial civilizations.
A call to action for humanity to initiate its expansion into the universe before other civilizations do.
Transcripts
Let's take over the universe in three easy steps.
Welcome. We've heard that you want to take over the universe.
Well, you've come to the right place.
In this video, we'll show you how to reach as many
as 4 billion galaxies, with just a few relatively easy steps
and 6 hours of the sun's energy.
Here's what you need to do.
One: Disassemble Mercury and build a Dyson swarm,
a multitude of solar captores around the sun.
Two: Build self-replicating probes.
And three: Launch the self-replicating probes
to every reachable galaxy.
In science fiction humanity's expansion into the universe
usually starts within our galaxy, the Milky Way.
After a new star system is occupied, humanity jumps to the next star
and so on.
Until we take the whole galaxy.
Then humanity jumps to the next nearest galaxy
and the process is repeated.
This is not how we're going to do it.
Our method is much more efficient.
We're going to send self-replicating probes
to all the reachable galaxies at once.
Getting to the furthest galaxies is not more difficult
than getting to the nearest ones.
It just takes more time.
When a probe arrives at its destination galaxy,
it will search for a planet to disassemble,
build another Dyson swarm and launch a new wave of probes
to reach every star within the galaxy.
And then each probe in that galaxy will restart civilization.
We already hear your protest, though: 'This whole thing
seems pretty hard to me,' you say.
'Especially the "disassembling mercury" part.'
But actually, none of these steps are as hard as they first appear.
If you analyze closely how they could be implemented,
you'll find solutions that are much easier
than you'd expect.
And that's exactly what Stuart Armstrong
and Anders Sandberg do in their paper, 'Eternity
in six hours: intergalactic spreading of intelligent life
and sharpening the Fermi paradox.'
This video is based on that paper.
Exploratory engineering and assumptions.
What we mean by 'easy' here is that we will require amounts
of energy and resources that are small
compared to what is at our disposal in the solar system.
Also, the technology required is not extremely far
beyond our capabilities today, and the time required
for the whole feat is insignificant on cosmic scales.
Not every potential future technology will make sense
to include in our plan to spread to the stars.
We need to choose what technologies to use by reasoning
in the style of exploratory engineering,
trying to figure out what techniques and designs
are physically possible and plausibly achievable
by human scientists.
The requirement 'physically possible' is much easier
to comply with than 'achievable by human scientists',
therefore, we introduce two assumptions
that serve to separate the plausible from the merely possible:
First: any process in the natural world
can be replicated with human technology.
This assumption makes sense in light of the fact
that humans have generally been successful
at copying or co-opting nature.
And second: Any task that can be performed
can be automated.
The rationale for this assumption is that humans
have proven to be adept at automating processes
and with advances in AI, we will become even more so.
Design of the Dyson Swarm.
Now we've said we're going to launch probes
to every reachable galaxy.
This means a hundred million to a hundred billion probes.
Where do we get the energy to power all these launches?
We don't need to come up with exotic sources of energy
we can't picture yet.
We can use the sun itself!
That's why we're going to build a Dyson swarm.
To be fair, in order to be sure that a Dyson swarm
will be sufficient, we need to already have
plausible designs for probes and launch systems in mind.
But this is a tutorial for pragmatic, wannabe grabby civilizations.
So we'll get to that later, when we actually use them.
A Dyson swarm is simply a multitude of solar captors
orbiting around the sun.
The easiest design is to use lightweight mirrors,
beaming the sun's radiation to focal points
where it's converted into useful work -
for example, using heat engines and solar cells.
A Dyson swarm has major advantages compared to a rigid Dyson sphere.
A swarm isn't subject to internal forces
that might make it collapse, and it can be made
with simple and conventional materials.
Even a swarm isn't without potential problems, though.
The captors have to be coordinated to avoid collisions
and occluding each other.
But these are not major difficulties.
There are already reasonable orbit designs in today's literature
and the captors will have large amounts
of reserves at their disposal to power any minor course correction.
The efficiency of the captors will not be an issue either.
We'll need only a small amount of energy to power our expansion
into the universe compared to the energy
a Dyson swarm will be able to collect.
The biggest problem to solve is how to get all of the material
necessary to build the solar captors, even assuming the lightest design
achievable with today's materials.
That is lightweight mirrors.
You'd need to take apart Mercury to get everything
you need for the swarm.
And that's exactly what we're going to do.
There are potentially other pathways to get the material,
but being able to take apart Mercury is the conservative assumption
to make, as weird as it sounds.
We're not assuming future super materials
that would let us build a swarm with extremely thin
and efficient captures and therefore with way less material.
Mercury looks very convenient to use in comparison
to the other planets and the asteroid belt.
Its orbit is approximately at the same distance
from the sun as the swarms, and it's a rocky planet.
70% metallic and 30% silicate.
This is material that we can transform
into reflective surfaces for the swarm
and use to build heat engines and solar cells.
The Semi-major axis of Mercury's orbit
is approximately 60 billion meters long.
Therefore, a sphere around the Sun with that radius
would have a surface area in the order of ten^22 square meters.
The mass of Mercury is in the order of 10^23 kilograms.
Now, let's assume we'll use about half of Mercury
to build the swarm.
If we conservatively pretend that the swarm
is a solid sphere around the Sun, we can take the fraction
between half of Mercury's mass and the surface of the sphere
we just calculated to get the mass of the sphere
per square metre, which is 3.92 kg/m^2.
This is plenty!
Iron has a density of 7874 kg/m^3, so we can obtain mirrors
with a thickness of at least half a millimetre.
We can already easily make mirrors this thin.
You can order them online if you want,
but most probably we would use a structure
with a much thinner film of the order of 0.001 mm,
supported by a network of rigid struts.
Disassembling Mercury.
Now let's disassemble Mercury and build this swarm, shall we?
We're going to build the Dyson swarm during the process of disassembly.
While we get material from the planet,
we build more of a swarm, and as we build new captors,
we get more energy to power more of the planet's disassembly,
and so on.
Essentially, we need a feedback loop like this: We mined
necessary material, we get the material into orbit,
we make solar collectors out of it, we get the energy
from the collectors, and we use that energy
to mine more material, and so the cycle repeats.
Sandberg and Armstrong assume a seed of 1 km^2
of solar panels constructed on Mercury
to start the feedback loop.
After the seed, the loop can begin with mining the initial material.
At each cycle, we have more energy at our disposal
to power more mining, and the process can easily speed up exponentially.
In fact, the feasibility of Mercury's disassembly hinges
on if we get an exponential feedback loop or not.
If we can't complete the loop or if it's not at least
near exponential, then we're out of luck.
The process would grind to a halt or be impossible to complete
in any reasonable amount of time.
If we want the energy at our disposal to increase exponentially,
the number of captors must increase by a fixed percentage at each cycle.
That means that the energy required to mine minerals,
get them into orbit and make captors must remain nearly constant
or decrease at each cycle.
But this is not a big concern.
Mining material and making solar collectors
shouldn't consume more energy as the disassembly progresses.
On the contrary, towards the end of the disassembly,
less energy will be required to get material into orbit,
as Mercury's gravity will be much easier to overcome.
A potential problem could be cooling Mercury's core,
but this is a fixed cost, and Mercury's heat
might be harvested to get more energy.
And now maybe you're thinking: 'Wait, even if we can get
an exponential feedback loop in theory,
how on Earth are we going to get the workers to do all this?'
And that's where our assumption that 'any task that can be performed
can be automated' comes in.
With automation, the sheer scale of projects
is simply not a problem.
New machines and factories can be built essentially
without human intervention.
Time, material and energy become the only things we need.
Encouragingly, NASA had a design for a self-replicating
lunar factory in 1980.
And surely, in the future we'll be able to do much better
than NASA in the 80's.
Sandberg and Armstrong make a few additional assumptions
to precisely estimate how long it'll take
to complete the Dyson swarm.
They assume: Solar captors with an efficiency of 1/3.
Only 1/10 of the energy will be used to propel material into space.
The rest will be used for mining or reprocessing material,
or simply be lost.
It takes five years to process the material
into solar captors and place them into the correct orbit.
And only half of Mercury's material will be used
to construct the captors.
Under these assumptions, the power available
will increase exponentially every five year cycle.
Mercury will be disassembled in 31 years with most of the mass
harvested in the last four years.
But as long as the exponential feedback loop
is possible, the details aren't that important
and will complete the disassembly within a few cycles
and a short amount of time.
And even if an exponential feedback loop
turns out not to be possible, it doesn't necessarily mean
we can't build a Dyson swarm.
This is just one way to attack the problem,
which relies on plausible future technology
constrained by conservative assumptions.
For example, if we're able to produce super materials,
taking apart a large asteroid might be sufficient.
Design of the probes.
Now that we've built the Dyson swarm, we have the energy
to launch countless self-replicating probes
into the universe.
Our probes should be capable of safely landing
on other planets or asteroids, using the resources there
to make copies of themselves.
Building other Dyson swarms, launching another wave of probes,
and ultimately starting civilization on other star systems.
By guessing that building self-replicating probes
will be possible with future technology,
we're essentially making use of the assumption
'Anything possible in the natural world
can also be done under human control'.
Every living thing is capable of replicating.
Here's a table of some of the smallest replicators
in nature. The smallest seed on earth weighs a billionth of a gram,
and the smallest acorn weighs 1 gram.
Think about it.
An acorn is a solar powered factory for the production of more acorns
that generates large structures in the process: Namely oak trees.
When thinking about the size of our probes,
we need to make a distinction between the self-copying piece
of the system, and the whole object that gets launched,
which may include fuel, rockets for deceleration,
and other equipment.
A reasonable upper limit for the size of the replicators
is 500 tons.
This is the size of the replicator in NASA's self-replicating
lunar factory design, which made very conservative assumptions.
As a lower limit, we can use the design
of Molecular Assembler by Robert Freitas and Ralph Merkle,
from their landmark book 'Kinematic Self-Replicating
Machines', a comprehensive review of self-replicating designs
up until 2004.
The mass of this replicator would be in the order of 10^ -18kg.
For reference, this is about a million times smaller
than a red blood cell.
The data storage on the probe would probably be
of insignificant mass.
An extremely compact design would be a diamond
constructed with carbon 12 and carbon 13.
The two isotopes would encode the bits 0 and 1.
A memory like this would have a capacity
of 6 billion terabytes per gram.
Or we could use a data storage mechanism
with the same compactness as DNA, in the order
of 100 million terabytes per gram.
As a comparison, the total amount of data
in the human world in 2020 could be stored
in about 500 grams of DNA-level storage.
Apart from the replicator, the probe needs fuel to decelerate
when approaching its destination.
Sandberg and Armstrong hypothesized three possible types of fuel
to power the deceleration.
In order of increasing speculativeness and efficiency,
they are: Nuclear fission, nuclear fusion,
and matter-antimatter annihilation.
As you can see in this table, they calculated the mass of fuel
needed, given different deceleration amounts
and type of fuel.
In the table the replicator is assumed to weigh 30 grams.
You can take the 'delta v' column as also indicating
'starting velocities' if the probe then decelerates to zero.
The values in bold are the kilograms of fuel needed,
given the most reasonable combinations of starting velocities
and type of fuel available.
This table doesn't take into account many things
that could aid deceleration, though.
For example, the trajectory of the probe
might be designed to use gravitational assists
to slow down, or magnetic sails could be used to create drag
against the local magnetic field in the destination galaxy.
Moreover, the expansion of the universe
means that some amount of deceleration
will come for free, and probes launch to distant galaxies
would arrive with little velocity.
In that case, we would need fuel only for maneuvering at the end.
There are many other speculative options
to help decelerating, such as the Bussard ramjet,
which uses enormous magnetic fields to collect hydrogen atoms
from the interstellar medium and compress them
to achieve nuclear fusion.
Another potential design choice for the probes
is to equip them with shields.
Intergalactic space is not empty.
The probes might encounter dust, and at relativistic speeds,
collisions can easily destroy our probes.
Another solution is simply to launch redundant probes
to compensate for the fact that some might be destroyed.
Sandberg and Armstrong estimate that for speeds
of 50% to 80% the speed of light launching two probes per galaxy
is enough to expect that at least one will arrive.
If the probes travel at 99% of the speed of light,
then we'd need to launch 40 probes to each galaxy.
The launch phase.
All right, now let's say we've chosen a viable design for the probes.
Their construction has taken little material
compared to the Dyson swarm.
The final combined mass of all the probes,
redundancy included, is in the order of 10^11 to 10^12 kg.
This is about the mass of a mountain.
The Dyson swarm is operational and provides us
with all the energy we need.
It is time to launch the probes.
We'll not use rockets, but a fixed launch system.
Rockets would be needlessly difficult and inefficient
to use for achieving acceleration to relativistic speeds.
They need to carry fuel, which would in turn
need to be accelerated and the fuel needed increases
exponentially with the change of speed we want to achieve.
Fixed launch systems sidestep this and are often reusable.
For example, we could use coilguns.
Essentially long barrels around which coils are arranged
and switched on and off with precise timings,
closing the probe in the barrel to accelerate
due to the magnetic forces generated by the coils.
With coilguns we could shoot our probes
into space in combination or by themselves.
We can also use solar sails accelerated by lasers
or particle beams.
Now look at this table.
For each type of probe and for each type of replicator
you can find in bold the time required to power the launch
if the energy of the Dyson swarm were entirely devoted to the task.
In the case of the 30 gram replicator,
the numbers are insignificant on a human scale.
6 hours of the sun's energy is the maximum we would need.
Instead, if the replicator is the 500 tons version,
we would need hundreds of years of the sun's energy.
But this also looks very feasible if you consider
that humanity might survive millions of years
and over time might divert some energy
of the Dyson swarm to power launches and not necessarily
launch all the probes at once.
After the universe, the galaxy.
Now picture a future President of the Solar System
proclaiming: 'Everyone turn off your virtual reality sets
for 6 hours.
We're taking over the universe!'
The probes are launched to every reachable galaxy,
and the travel begins.
Once this first wave is en route, we can launch a new wave of probes
within the Milky Way at lower speeds.
So we'd start expanding into our own galaxy only
after having started expanding into the wider universe.
Meanwhile, the probes we've launched to other galaxies
will progressively continue to start new civilizations
for the following 10 billion years, and after that
our expansion will be complete.
10 billion years may sound like a lot,
but the universe will last for trillions of years.
Future humanity will have plenty of time to enjoy
even the most distant galaxies.
Armstrong and Sandberg calculated that at speeds
between 50% and 99% of the speed of light,
the probes will reach 116 million to 4 billion galaxies.
The higher the speed, the more galaxies
the probes can reach because the universe is expanding
at an accelerating pace.
And as time passes, an increasingly large number
of galaxies become forever out of reach.
If we can't find a way to sidestep the speed of light limit.
Final considerations.
And now that every step is complete, you know how
to take over the universe.
You don't need to do everything exactly this way, though.
This paper proposed many possible designs
and methods at each step, but there are
certainly many more ways to go.
Moreover, Armstrong and Sandberg used conservative assumptions.
The real designs will probably be better.
The point of the paper was to illustrate
that the feat is in principle, possible with cosmically
insignificant amounts of time and energy.
One additional point motivating the paper
is that since spreading through the universe
doesn't require a lot of resources, that means that the Fermi paradox
is a lot sharper than we imagined.
There are millions of galaxies that could have potentially
reached us by now, and yet we don't see
any alien colonization projects in our local neighborhood.
This could simply mean that there's pretty
much no one else out there.
Or another answer could be the one given
in the grabby aliens videos.
If we could have seen aliens, they would be here now instead of us.
If there are indeed aliens out there, that means our time
to begin expanding into the universe is even more limited
than we previously thought.
Not only is the universe expanding at an accelerating rate,
making more and more galaxies forever out of reach,
but aliens might also be out there grabbing galaxies instead of us.
So what are we waiting for?
Let's go and do it ourselves.
Let's take over
the
universe!
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