Re: Brown dwarves, deep future

On 2008-04-25, Ben Crowell <crowell08@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> I think this depends a lot on what population you intend to support.
> If the population is 1, you need very little energy. If you think a
> thriving civilization really needs a population of at least 10^12,
> then you need more.

Yes, and also how much energy they need to support their accustomed
lifestyle.  For sufficiently large numbers in both, they may well want
all the power output of a main sequence star.

But yes, the main problem over that sort of timescale is change and/or
conflict, whether arising from within or imposed from without.  In the
case of humans, we've so far demonstrated that we probably couldn't
remain sufficiently constant over 10^3 years, let alone 10^28 times
longer.


Even one-in-a-quintillion chances per millenium of some form of major
instability turn into essential certainties over that time period.


- Tim