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Matrioshka Brain: How advanced civilizations could reshape reality
Future or extraterrestrial civilizations could create megastructures the size of a solar system.

- Advanced civilizations are likely to create megastructures to harness the energy of the stars.
- These megastructures could be nested, creating "Matrioshka Brains" – the Universe's most powerful supercomputers.
- Matrioshka Brains could be used to simulate reality and remake the Universe.
Why create a Matrioshka Brain
To some people, like Elon Musk, the troubling thought is that we don't really know whether we live in a "real" or impressively-rendered digital world. What makes the prospect of us living in a simulation more than a tired billionaire's flight of fancy is the possible existence of Matrioshka brains, theoretical megastructures that could harness the power of stars.
To understand how they would work, we need to look very far into the future.
With the advent of scientific thinking, humans discovered a seemingly reliable method for probing the world around us. We learned much about what the world is made of and how to bend some parts of it to our will. But what we learned and developed technologically is likely negligent compared to what's about to come, especially if we project our current rate of progress. One prediction is that the needs of an advanced society for more energy will at some point lead to the creation of megastructures called Dyson Spheres. These would encircle stars like our Sun to harness their energy.
Dyson Spheres
Freeman Dyson, the physicist who came up with the idea of Dyson Spheres saw their possible existence as something to keep in mind when searching for alien life. His 1960 paper "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infra-Red Radiation" advocates looking for unusual emission signatures of hypothetical structures like Dyson Spheres to spot other spacefaring civilizations.
But as inventor Robert Bradbury wrote, Dyson saw his spheres as quite specifically as a place to live. For example, a "layer of habitats for human beings orbiting the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter." What Bradbury came up with is an extension of that idea - what if a Dyson sphere was turned into a computer, the most powerful machine in the Universe?
"If extraterrestrial intelligent beings exist and have reached a high level of technical development, one by-product of their energy metabolism is likely to be the large-scale conversion of starlight into far-infrared radiation," wrote Freeman Dyson. "It is proposed that a search for sources of infrared radiation should accompany the recently initiated search for interstellar radio communications.
Artist's concept of a Dyson sphere. Credit: Adam Burn.
Bradbury's year million proposal
What Bradbury envisioned in the anthology
"Year Million: Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge" is that far in the future, we'd have the technology to create a set of nested shells around a star – each shell essentially being a Dyson Sphere. Because this megastructure would resemble a Russian nested Matryoshka doll, where smaller dolls fit inside larger ones, he called the concept a "Matrioshka Brain". This solar-system-sized machine would be the most powerful computer in the Universe, harvesting all the useful energy from a star, while rendering it "essentially invisible at visible wavelengths".
To work as a giant computer, or the "highest capacity thought machine" as Bradbury wrote, a Matrioshka Brain (MB) would draw power from the star and spread it through the shells. One shell (or sphere) would collect all the energy it could draw from the star and then would pass on the excess to another larger processing shell that would surround it. This would repeat until all the energy was exhausted.
The shells would be made of computronium - a hypothetical material which nears the theoretical limit of computational power. The inner shells would run at a temperature close to the star's while the outer shells would be at the temperature of interstellar space.
If they were built in our solar system, the Matrioshka Brain shells would have orbits ranging from inside Mercury's to outside Neptune's, claimed Bradbury.
How and when we could get a Matrioshka Brain
Needless to stay, the scope of the engineering and resources required for such a project would be tremendous and far beyond what humans can currently muster. One technology mentioned by Bradbury that is actually being created now and can lead to the construction of such immense structures are self-replicating factories. The company Made in Space has been making headway in its implementation and design of 3D printing tech in space, with the ultimate goals of putting factories that build themselves into orbit.
How would you, a superpower civilization that ranks high on the
Kardashev scale, use such a computer, which could conceivably have all the power of the Sun at its disposal? Among science fiction aficionados, uses of this hypothetical super-tool, a class B stellar engine, could range from uploading human minds into virtual reality to changing the structure of the universe, as imagined author Charles Stross. The computers could also be used to simulate reality, potentially creating a whole alternate universe. This, of course, leads to the question - how real is our current universe?
What if the whole world around you was just a very good simulation? One that engages all your senses, feeding you information about supposed smells, sights and sounds. But, ultimately, it's a computer program that's running and none of the things you think you are encountering are actually there. And what's the difference if the simulation is so amazingly realistic?
The mere prospect of Matrioshka Brains makes these questions have real potency. For what it's worth, Bradbury predicted that if current trends (circa 2000) were projected, humans would be able to build such a machine brain by 2250. He thought it would require most of the silicon from the planet planet Venus as raw material. Even so, the first MB would have the "thought capacity in excess of a million times the thought capacity of the 6 billion+ people," wrote Bradbury.
For more on Matrioshka Brains, check out Bradbury's paper on how to build one.
‘Designer baby’ book trilogy explores the moral dilemmas humans may soon create
How would the ability to genetically customize children change society? Sci-fi author Eugene Clark explores the future on our horizon in Volume I of the "Genetic Pressure" series.
- A new sci-fi book series called "Genetic Pressure" explores the scientific and moral implications of a world with a burgeoning designer baby industry.
- It's currently illegal to implant genetically edited human embryos in most nations, but designer babies may someday become widespread.
- While gene-editing technology could help humans eliminate genetic diseases, some in the scientific community fear it may also usher in a new era of eugenics.
Tribalism and discrimination
<p>One question the "Genetic Pressure" series explores: What would tribalism and discrimination look like in a world with designer babies? As designer babies grow up, they could be noticeably different from other people, potentially being smarter, more attractive and healthier. This could breed resentment between the groups—as it does in the series.</p><p>"[Designer babies] slowly find that 'everyone else,' and even their own parents, becomes less and less tolerable," author Eugene Clark told Big Think. "Meanwhile, everyone else slowly feels threatened by the designer babies."</p><p>For example, one character in the series who was born a designer baby faces discrimination and harassment from "normal people"—they call her "soulless" and say she was "made in a factory," a "consumer product." </p><p>Would such divisions emerge in the real world? The answer may depend on who's able to afford designer baby services. If it's only the ultra-wealthy, then it's easy to imagine how being a designer baby could be seen by society as a kind of hyper-privilege, which designer babies would have to reckon with. </p><p>Even if people from all socioeconomic backgrounds can someday afford designer babies, people born designer babies may struggle with tough existential questions: Can they ever take full credit for things they achieve, or were they born with an unfair advantage? To what extent should they spend their lives helping the less fortunate? </p>Sexuality dilemmas
<p>Sexuality presents another set of thorny questions. If a designer baby industry someday allows people to optimize humans for attractiveness, designer babies could grow up to find themselves surrounded by ultra-attractive people. That may not sound like a big problem.</p><p>But consider that, if designer babies someday become the standard way to have children, there'd necessarily be a years-long gap in which only some people are having designer babies. Meanwhile, the rest of society would be having children the old-fashioned way. So, in terms of attractiveness, society could see increasingly apparent disparities in physical appearances between the two groups. "Normal people" could begin to seem increasingly ugly.</p><p>But ultra-attractive people who were born designer babies could face problems, too. One could be the loss of body image. </p><p>When designer babies grow up in the "Genetic Pressure" series, men look like all the other men, and women look like all the other women. This homogeneity of physical appearance occurs because parents of designer babies start following trends, all choosing similar traits for their children: tall, athletic build, olive skin, etc. </p><p>Sure, facial traits remain relatively unique, but everyone's more or less equally attractive. And this causes strange changes to sexual preferences.</p><p>"In a society of sexual equals, they start looking for other differentiators," he said, noting that violet-colored eyes become a rare trait that genetically engineered humans find especially attractive in the series.</p><p>But what about sexual relationships between genetically engineered humans and "normal" people? In the "Genetic Pressure" series, many "normal" people want to have kids with (or at least have sex with) genetically engineered humans. But a minority of engineered humans oppose breeding with "normal" people, and this leads to an ideology that considers engineered humans to be racially supreme. </p>Regulating designer babies
<p>On a policy level, there are many open questions about how governments might legislate a world with designer babies. But it's not totally new territory, considering the West's dark history of eugenics experiments.</p><p>In the 20th century, the U.S. conducted multiple eugenics programs, including immigration restrictions based on genetic inferiority and forced sterilizations. In 1927, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that forcibly sterilizing the mentally handicapped didn't violate the Constitution. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote, "… three generations of imbeciles are enough." </p><p>After the Holocaust, eugenics programs became increasingly taboo and regulated in the U.S. (though some states continued forced sterilizations <a href="https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/" target="_blank">into the 1970s</a>). In recent years, some policymakers and scientists have expressed concerns about how gene-editing technologies could reanimate the eugenics nightmares of the 20th century. </p><p>Currently, the U.S. doesn't explicitly ban human germline genetic editing on the federal level, but a combination of laws effectively render it <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">illegal to implant a genetically modified embryo</a>. Part of the reason is that scientists still aren't sure of the unintended consequences of new gene-editing technologies. </p><p>But there are also concerns that these technologies could usher in a new era of eugenics. After all, the function of a designer baby industry, like the one in the "Genetic Pressure" series, wouldn't necessarily be limited to eliminating genetic diseases; it could also work to increase the occurrence of "desirable" traits. </p><p>If the industry did that, it'd effectively signal that the <em>opposites of those traits are undesirable. </em>As the International Bioethics Committee <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote</a>, this would "jeopardize the inherent and therefore equal dignity of all human beings and renew eugenics, disguised as the fulfillment of the wish for a better, improved life."</p><p><em>"Genetic Pressure Volume I: Baby Steps"</em><em> by Eugene Clark is <a href="http://bigth.ink/38VhJn3" target="_blank">available now.</a></em></p>Octopus-like creatures inhabit Jupiter’s moon, claims space scientist
A leading British space scientist thinks there is life under the ice sheets of Europa.
Jupiter's moon Europa has a huge ocean beneath its sheets of ice.
- A British scientist named Professor Monica Grady recently came out in support of extraterrestrial life on Europa.
- Europa, the sixth largest moon in the solar system, may have favorable conditions for life under its miles of ice.
- The moon is one of Jupiter's 79.
Neil deGrasse Tyson wants to go ice fishing on Europa
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-media_id="GLGsRX7e" data-player_id="FvQKszTI" data-rm-shortcode-id="f4790eb8f0515e036b24c4195299df28"> <div id="botr_GLGsRX7e_FvQKszTI_div" class="jwplayer-media" data-jwplayer-video-src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/GLGsRX7e-FvQKszTI.js"> <img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/thumbs/GLGsRX7e-1920.jpg" class="jwplayer-media-preview" /> </div> <script src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/GLGsRX7e-FvQKszTI.js"></script> </div>Water Vapor Above Europa’s Surface Deteced for First Time
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9c4abc8473e1b89170cc8941beeb1f2d"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WQ-E1lnSOzc?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>Lair of giant predator worms from 20 million years ago found
Scientists discover burrows of giant predator worms that lived on the seafloor 20 million years ago.
Bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois).
- Scientists in Taiwan find the lair of giant predator worms that inhabited the seafloor 20 million years ago.
- The worm is possibly related to the modern bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois).
- The creatures can reach several meters in length and famously ambush their pray.
A three-dimensional model of the feeding behavior of Bobbit worms and the proposed formation of Pennichnus formosae.
Credit: Scientific Reports
Beware the Bobbit Worm!
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1f9918e77851242c91382369581d3aac"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_As1pHhyDHY?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>What is the ‘self’? The 3 layers of your identity.
Answering the question of who you are is not an easy task. Let's unpack what culture, philosophy, and neuroscience have to say.
- Who am I? It's a question that humans have grappled with since the dawn of time, and most of us are no closer to an answer.
- Trying to pin down what makes you you depends on which school of thought you prescribe to. Some argue that the self is an illusion, while others believe that finding one's "true self" is about sincerity and authenticity.
- In this video, author Gish Jen, Harvard professor Michael Puett, psychotherapist Mark Epstein, and neuroscientist Sam Harris discuss three layers of the self, looking through the lens of culture, philosophy, and neuroscience.
Here’s how you know when someone’s lying to your face
When someone is lying to you personally, you may be able to see what they're doing.
