10-22-2015, 06:03 AM
Perhaps partial Dysons are much more common as "full" ones. I mean even a partial Dyson would astronomically outcompute the entire human race. If we assume a Mercury mass Dyson and nanotech computronium working at 10e20 flops per kg (a very conservative estimate just for the sake of the argument) we get 10e43 flops. Assuming only 1/1000 of the mass is used for computation and 99.9% for support infrastructure this still leaves us with 10e40 flops. Even if we assume a zettaflop (10e21 flops) for a human brain equivalent (again very conservative) we are left with the computing power of 10e19 human brains or a billion times humanity. Even if building a full Dyson takes just a hundred years the partial dyson would experience the progress of the lifetime of the universe in this time (assuming just running the minds faster und leaving aside any improvements of the computronium and the growth of computronium mass). It is not hard to imagine they would come up with technologies that transcends nanotech Dyson nodes. As there are no galaxies that got transformed completely we can assume that Dyson nodes are either very rarely or never built by advanced civilisations (because if a civ builds one there is no reason why it can't build 1 billion), that there are no advanced civs or that Dyson nodes are simply not the pinnacle of technological evolution (which is my favourite explanation of course). Thoughts?