Self-Replicating Interstellar Probes and Runaway Growth Reconsidered
£5.00
Stephen Ashworth, (2022), JBIS, 75, pp. 283-292
Refcode: 2022.75.283
DOI: n/a
Abstract:
The idea of a robotic interstellar probe which, after arrival in the planetary system of a nearby star, constructs a copy of itself and launches it towards a star more distant from its point of origin, has been a popular one in the technical and science-fiction literature. Some recent papers have claimed that such machines will necessarily fail after a certain number of generations, and thus the volume of space explored by them will remain small on a galactic scale. The question is reconsidered taking into account the likely growth rates, propulsion methods, sizes of seed economy, and motivations of actors in the launching civilisation as well as of the machines themselves. It is concluded that self-replicating probes are indeed likely to emerge as a natural consequence of interstellar exploration and that they may spread freely on a galactic scale, given favourable initial conditions. Their observational absence in the Solar System is a constraint on the abundance of industrial life in the Galaxy, but only a weak one: one or a very few instances of such civilisations are not ruled out.
Keywords: Self-replicating probe, Von Neumann probe, Interstellar Exploration, Interstellar Settlement, Fermi Paradox, Nuclear Fusion rocket, Laser Beam Propulsion
