Matrioshka Brain Home Page

A Matrioshka Brain is a megascale structure constructed at atomic scale limits.  It is essentially a Dyson Shell supercomputer, that uses all of the energy a star produces and all of the material in a solar system for "computronium".  Because of their size, immense observational and computational abilities, Matrioshka Brains should have longevities at least as long as those of stars (~10¹⁴ years for smaller stars).

Whether or not Matrioshka Brains or similar structures exist in our galaxy currently is presently unknown.  As discussed in the papers below, the astronomical evidence lies someplace between provocative and suggestive.  Even should they not currently exist, they are worthy of further study because it is likely that humans will possess the technological capability of building one in our solar system or around nearby stars within the next century.

Some may ask how does a Matrioshka Brain differ from a Dyson Shell?  The answer is that the original concept, as envisioned by Freeman Dyson, was a single layer of habitats for human beings orbiting the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.  Given the material requirements of "habitats" it is possible that a civilization may be required to construct them in such a way that the star they surround would remain visible.  (This may be why anthropocentric SETI searches for Dyson Shells point their telescopes and radio receivers at visible stars.  Alternatively this may just be a problem that insufficient thought has been devoted to the evolution of technological civilizations.)  A Matrioshka Brain, in contrast to a Dyson Shell, is a set of nested shells (like the nested Russian Matryoshka Dolls) that surrounds a star most likely from orbits that would range from inside Mercury's to outside Neptune's in our solar system.  The material requirements of its computronium are sufficiently low that there is nothing to prevent the civilization from completely harvesting all of the more useful energy produced by the star resulting in it being essentially invisible at visible wavelengths.  The computronium would support advanced technological civilizations whose thought architectures and capabilities go far [really far(!)] beyond those found in  human brains and humanity as they currently exist.

One way to think about Matrioshka Brains is to ask the question, "What is the highest capacity thought machine (computer) that can be constructed using the smallest scale technology (e.g. molecular nanotechnology) within a solar system?"  The basis for discussing Matrioshka Brains is to adhere to generally accepted laws of physics and forego the invention of new laws (something that is required for some lines of thought in Science Fiction).
 

Further Information:

• Matrioshka Brains (includes discussion of architectures, construction, limits, etc.); ~33 pages
• Planetary Disassembly; ~12 pages
• Disassembly of Gas Giants and Brown Dwarfs (in progress)
• Discussion of the LogP computer architecture model; ~5 pages
• Globular Clusters and Astroengineering (July, 2001), ~2 pages
• Example of a Matrioshka Brain Size Scale relative to our solar system (~2000), ~2 pages
• Jupiter and Matrioshka Brains History & References, ~2 pages

Papers & Posters

• Bradbury, R. J., "When Stars Go Dark" (2000).
• Bradbury, R. J., "Dyson Shell Supercomputers As The Dominant `Life Form' in Galaxies", poster presented at Bioastronomy 99: A New Era in Bioastronomy, 2-6 August 1999. (Abstract)
• Bradbury, R. J., "Microlensing Meets SETI: Observations of Evolutionary Endpoints?", poster presented at Microlensing 2000: A New Era of Microlensing Astrophysics, 21-25 February 2000, Cape Town South Africa. (Abstract)
• Bradbury, R. J., "Life at the Limits of Physical Laws", presentation at "Frontiers of Life" (XIIth Rencontres de Blois) 25 June - 1st July, 2000. (Abstract)
• Bradbury, R. J., "Life at the Limits of Physical Laws", SPIE 4273-32 OSETI III (Jan 2001). [Abstract, Tex format; PS format]
• Bradbury, R. J., "Dyson Shells: A Retrospective", SPIE 4273-27 OSETI III (Jan 2001). [Abstract, Tex format; PS format]

Related Documents

• Amato, I., "Speculating in Precious Computronium", Science 253:856-857 (21 Aug 1991); See also: Sandberg, A., "Transhuman Technology Sub-Page" under COMPUTRONIUM and Yudkowsky, E., "Creating a Friendly AI" glossary term: "computronium".
• Lloyd, S., "Computational capacity of the Universe" (24 Oct 2001);  [quant-ph/0110141]
• Geon, "The Ultimate Limits of Computers", Ars Techica (June, 2001).
• Lloyd, S., "Ultimate physical limits to computation", Nature 406(6799):1047-1054 (August 31, 2000) [quant-ph/9908043].

See also: "The Last Computer", New Scientist September 2, 2000.  Slashdot Discussion and Brockman, J., "Rebooting Civilization", The Edge (23 Jul 2001).
• Johansen, A. & Sornette, D., "Finite-time singularity in the dynamics of the world population, economic and financial indicies", LANL Preprint: [cond-mat/0002075] (7 Aug 2000).
• Frank, M. P., Knight, T., Margolus, N., "Reversibility in optimal scalable computer architectures", in the proceedings of Unconventional Models of Computing '98 (Jan. 5, 1998)  Published as part of DMTCS Series: Unconventional Models of Computing C. S. Calude, J. Casti, M. J. Dinneen (eds.), Springer-Verlag, Singapore (1998).
• Sandberg, Anders, "The Physics of Information Processing Superobjects: Daily Life Among the Jupiter Brains",  Journal of Transhumanism 5 (1999).  Preprint was available in 1997.
• Bostrom, N., "Is the idea of a Jupiter Brain Naive" (1997?). [currently unavailable]
• Vinge, V.,  "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era", Vision-21:Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in the Era of Cyberspace, NASA-CP-10129, pp. 11-22, Conference held March 21-23 at NASA
• Tudosa, I., Stamm, C., Kashuba, A. B., King, F., Siegmann, H.C., Stohr, J., Ju, G., Lu, B., Weller, D., "The ultimate speed of magnetic switching in granular recording media", Nature 428:831–833 (22 Apr 2004); doi:10.1038/nature02438
• Krauss, L. M., Starkman, G. D., "Universal Limits on Computation", Phys. Rev. Lett. (submitted 2004).
• Mone, G., "Is Science Fiction About to Go Blind?", Popular Science (August 2004) [see pg 2 of article and also slashdot discussion].