This thread reminded me of the idea of von Neumann machines.
Someone do the math here, I’m bad at it.
If I were to make one machine the mass and size of a baseball and released it into the earth (for simplicity let’s say it can consume any materials), and it reproduced itself exactly twice a day… how long would it take to “eat” the world?
It can consume lava and survive under high pressure as well.
[QUOTE=clayton_e]
This thread reminded me of the idea of von Neumann machines.
Someone do the math here, I’m bad at it.
If I were to make one machine the mass and size of a baseball and released it into the earth (for simplicity let’s say it can consume any materials), and it reproduced itself exactly twice a day.. how long would it take to “eat” the world?
It can consume lava and survive under high pressure as well.
[/QUOTE]
Can it consume other example of itself?
The mass of the earth is 5.9742 × 10[sup]24[/sup] kg, and the mass of a baseball is roughly .145 kg. So there are 4.12 × 10[sup]25[/sup] baseball mass equivalents in the earth, which is roughly 2[sup]85[/sup]. So it’d take about 42.5 days, assuming the earth to machine conversion is perfectly efficient.
And I must say, when I saw the thread title, I thought of something rather different.
[QUOTE=ultrafilter]
So it’d take about 42.5 days
[/QUOTE]
Ah, but that assumes the “offspring” are just as hungry. If it’s just the one machine chomping away, and it doesn’t eat any of its children:
4.12 × 10[sup]25[/sup] baseball mass units in Earth =
2.06 × 10[sup]25[/sup] days (@ 2 meals/day) =
5.64 x 10[sup]22[/sup] years =
4.03 x 10[sup]12[/sup] universe lifetimes (@ 1.4 x 10[sup]10[/sup] years/universe)
Yeah, yeah, I know that’s not what the OP meant, but I threw it in for laughs.
[QUOTE=ultrafilter]
And I must say, when I saw the thread title, I thought of something rather different.
[/QUOTE]
Seconded.