I agree that it’s plausible just from priors that ASI could find a way to eat the sun. The matter is there, and while it’s strongly gravitationally bound in a way that’s inconvenient, there’s nothing physically impossible about getting it out of that arrangement into one that’s more convenient to using fusion reactors or something.
But an analysis of how plausible the scenario is would certainly have made the post more valuable. There are plausible proposals for how to get the fuel present in the sun out such that it could be used more efficiently, and while it may be possible that an ASI might come up with a more elegant or efficient plan, there are some fundamental physical limits on exactly how efficient the process could be made.
That article says: “This energy could be collected by a Dyson sphere; using 10% of the Sun’s total power output would allow 5.9 x10^21 kilograms of matter to be lifted per year (0.0000003% of the Sun’s total mass)”, but this doesn’t take account of the possibility of using the collected mass to fuel fusion reactions that are then used to power the mass collection. What are the constraints on that process (my first thought is you have to worry about heat if you try to get the total power too high).
10,000 years sounds like enough time if you can get an exponential process going that uses the fuel harvested from the sun to collect more fuel. But any process will have some constraints, such as max temperature at which the various parts of your system can function, or the specific materials which your system is made of (do you have to build your fusion reactors out of materials harvested from metal rich bodies? can you use carbon converted into diamondoid nanomachines? can you get enough of those materials out of the fusion of hydrogen to keep the process going once it’s started?). Even if your fuel harvesters and fusion reactors can stand up to the high temperatures necessary to eat the sun in that time frame, what about everything else in the solar system? Does this process sterilize the earth of biological life?
Once I consider that there will be some sort of physical contraints on the process and also remember the fact that the sun is really big, it’s not obvious that even an exponential process of fuel harvesting from the sun will be completed in a 10,000 year time frame.
I agree that it’s plausible just from priors that ASI could find a way to eat the sun. The matter is there, and while it’s strongly gravitationally bound in a way that’s inconvenient, there’s nothing physically impossible about getting it out of that arrangement into one that’s more convenient to using fusion reactors or something.
But an analysis of how plausible the scenario is would certainly have made the post more valuable. There are plausible proposals for how to get the fuel present in the sun out such that it could be used more efficiently, and while it may be possible that an ASI might come up with a more elegant or efficient plan, there are some fundamental physical limits on exactly how efficient the process could be made.
Wikipedia has some discussion of possible methods: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting
That article says: “This energy could be collected by a Dyson sphere; using 10% of the Sun’s total power output would allow 5.9 x10^21 kilograms of matter to be lifted per year (0.0000003% of the Sun’s total mass)”, but this doesn’t take account of the possibility of using the collected mass to fuel fusion reactions that are then used to power the mass collection. What are the constraints on that process (my first thought is you have to worry about heat if you try to get the total power too high).
10,000 years sounds like enough time if you can get an exponential process going that uses the fuel harvested from the sun to collect more fuel. But any process will have some constraints, such as max temperature at which the various parts of your system can function, or the specific materials which your system is made of (do you have to build your fusion reactors out of materials harvested from metal rich bodies? can you use carbon converted into diamondoid nanomachines? can you get enough of those materials out of the fusion of hydrogen to keep the process going once it’s started?). Even if your fuel harvesters and fusion reactors can stand up to the high temperatures necessary to eat the sun in that time frame, what about everything else in the solar system? Does this process sterilize the earth of biological life?
Once I consider that there will be some sort of physical contraints on the process and also remember the fact that the sun is really big, it’s not obvious that even an exponential process of fuel harvesting from the sun will be completed in a 10,000 year time frame.