The easiest(maybe) way to conquer space: Von Neumann probes

It might be the coolest tech that we could make

As Humans we have always pondered to go to the distant planets and colonize them . Now as private companies are planning to explore the space its been more popular than ever , But its hard to make other planets our next base as most planets don’t have earth like conditions . That’s where von Neumann probes come into scene.

Here I will explain it in plain English - They are self replicating spacecrafts. One left in space will find a planet and exploit its resources to form others like it and others will do the same . Then they can be directed to mine or terraform other planets. One single probe to conquer them all . This tech is named after John Von Neumann one of the greatest Mathematician to ever live . It is a concatenation of two concepts: a Von Neumann universal constructor (self-replicating machine) and a probe (The explorer). In order for them to be successful they have to be made of materials abundant in our galaxy.

It has been theorized that one probe can spread through the milky way in just a million years which is really less compared to if we humans set out to do it . It would take us 1/4th of that time just to reach at the end of our galaxy at 1/6th of light speed(approx) .It seems the fastest way to reach other stars but its really hard and one of the things that can accelerate its progress is ML which would be unarguably most important part of it, as it should be able to learn form our and its past experience .Some suggest that it can become a virus for our galaxy and start consuming most of it mass to replicate and some suggest even if we set a limit and one probe goes rouge it may become a type of technological cancer but I am optimist so my blog might be biased towards its features and not towards it side effects .

We can’t go every place in space to discover it ourselves because of our pity little lifespans even if we want to risk our whole lives , so unmanned spacecrafts are the most viable options to get their resources and set up bases on other planets before we arrive their ourselves . We might not discover carbon based life but we might discover these type of space crafts of other intelligent species as they probably might too have lifespans as short as ours. So the question is not why should we develop them but when?

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