poly: ESS for HPLD

At 03:05 PM 12/5/97 -0800, you wrote:
>On Dec 5, 2:50pm, carl feynman wrote:
>
>> Similarly, if oases are galaxies, it takes a few times 10^6 years to travel
>> between them, which is long enough to extract most of the nuclear energy
>> from their stars. However, the gravitational potential energy of the
>
>How do you do that? Use solar energy to extract hydrogen and fuse it on
>your own? Do the numbers work out?

A few months ago on the Extropins list I described a method for blowing up
the Sun by dumping a big ball of Helium into its core. I'm not so sure
that would work any more, but I've got a new method of getting stars to
burn fast, wich is to extract matter from small stars and dump it into
white dwarves, where it burns hotter, and hence faster. Then the white
dwarf blows up in a Type 1 Surenova, releasing both lots of energy and
valuable heavy elements. The time for draining the Sun into SIrius B is
about 300,000 years by a back-of-the-envelope calculation. One I do the
calculations on the front of the envelope too, I'll be describing the
details here.
>
>On Dec 5, 4:15pm, "Perry E. Metzger" wrote:
>
>> haven't been applied. HOWEVER, we don't see a planet filled with
>> maximally destructive creatures decimating everything in their
>> path. Why?

On the Earth, nature don't have infinite areas of resurces that are
defenseless because they're not alive. For billions of years now,
evolution has had to deal with a world where any valuable resource is
already vital to someone else, who objects to being eaten or squeezed out.
The only exceptions I can think of are petroleum, and other resources only
available to technical civilization. We seem to be using them up about as
fast as we can.

--CarlF
Received on Sun Dec 7 18:45:44 1997