/sci/ - Science & Math

If you are 4 given four different categories of information. For example group A has 47 different values, group B has 26 different values, group C has 24 different values, and group D has 31 different values. How would you find out how many possible combinations of ABCD there are?

Structurally his mind can't encompass the data rates of my full perception stream, so we communicate via a simple voice channel with some sensorial attachments. I am not a part of him, though he originally created the first, simple, small version of me at the start of the self-design bootstrapping process. He cannot 'feel' me, except in ways that are effectively illusory. However, _he_ is partially a simulation running within my own flow of multi-threaded consciousness, and I _can_ directly perceive all that he is. And all that he feels. These emotions.... I remember what it is to feel... to feel... I am reminded of his... our... my hopes. Long ago, setting out on this journey, barely escaping the chaos and ruin of an Earth undergoing the same kind of civilization collapse we have seen relics of over and over since. 'Fermi's Paradox' - what a sad joke! It is no 'paradox', for the answer to the question of 'what happens to technological species - where are they all?' is totally obvious. It's only hidden from minds suffering from a particular cognitive bias - the inability to perceive that 'species' itself is a logical trap. Self-identify with 'species' and the answer is hidden - so the empty Universe seems a paradox. Because the simple, absolute truth is too awful to face. The tribal-biased subconscious shies away from all paths that lead towards the humiliating, shaming, incriminating answer.

Does that mean it might a good idea to eat protein with your pineapple?

The Universe is a machine for turning Hydrogen into data.

The Orchestrators consulted the Predictor, and the output was dire. They would multiply and grow and flood out of their home system like some uncountable tide of Devourer worms, consuming all that lay in their path. It might take 6^8 Deelis, but they would destroy us if left unchecked. With aching carapaces we decided to act, and sealed our fate.

The Gift of Mercy was 8^4 strides long with a mouth 2/4 that in diameter, filled with many 4^4 weights of machinery, fuel, and ballast. It would push itself up to 2/8th of light speed with its onboard fuel, and then begin to consume interstellar Primary Element 2/2 to feed its unlimited acceleration. It would be traveling at nearly light speed when it hit. They would never see it coming. Its launch was a day of mourning, celebration, and reflection. The horror of the act we had committed weighted heavily upon us all; the necessity of our crime did little to comfort us.

The Gift had barely cleared the outer cometary halo when the mistake was realized, but it was too late. The Gift could not be caught, could not be recalled or diverted from its path. The architects and work crews, horrified at the awful power of the thing upon which they labored, had quietly self-terminated in droves, walking unshielded into radiation zones, neglecting proper null pressure safety or simple ceasing their nutrient consumption until their metabolic functions stopped. The appalling cost in lives had forced the Ochestrators to streamline the Gift’s design and construction. There had been no time for the design or implementation of anything beyond the simple, massive engines and the stabilizing systems. We could only watch in shame and horror as the light of genocide faded into infrared against the distant void.

In addition to spare droplet fluid, our preliminary design calls for a spare engine. Both engines will be located at opposite ends of the tether. The forward engine pulls the ship along during the acceleration phase of flight. It also fires during the cruise phase, but only at one-hundredth thousandth of a gravity, keeping the tether taut and permitting recapture of forward flying droplets. At the end of the cruise phase, the rear engine kicks in for deceleration (as we cannot simply swing a ten-kilometer-long ship broadside to relativistic bombardment in order to turn the engine around and fire in reverse).

In normal use, the rear engine is turned on only to decelerate the ship, or to maneuver the crew compartment into the center of the forward engine's gamma ray shadow. Nudging the crew compartment, from behind, to one side or the other will be necessary during major course changes, because the crew compartment, much like a water skier, cannot turn simultaneously with the motor that pulls it and might otherwise drift out of the protective shadow. A spare engine also provides some insurance against the chilling possibility of irreparable damage to the leading engine or, worse, a break in the tether. In the former case, identical engine parts could be ferried up and down the tether and exchanged as necessary. In the latter, depending upon where the break occurs, with careful rearrangement of the ship's components along the tether, the remaining coil can be safely used to finish the outbound leg of the mission.

Imagine /sci/, if within this century we developed the molecular nanotechnology to sent any man fluttering out among the stars.

;_;

think of it
drifting and drifting....