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CannibalSmith comments on UFAI cannot be the Great Filter - Less Wrong
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We have particle accelerators that achieve Lorentz factors of 7,500. I proposed a Lorentz factor of 22. Never mind a superintelligence, we, are on the brink of being able to accelerate nanomachines to that speed (assuming we had nanomachines).
The only implausible thing is being able to decelerate non-destructively at the target, and none of us have given that even 5 whole minutes of serious thought, never mind a couple trillion superintelligent FLOPS.
Here are my five minutes: nanomachines need to carry a charge to be accelerable, right? Well, it works the other way too - they will decelerate on their own in destination's Van Allen belts.
They don't actually decelerate in the Van Allen belts, though. Magnetic fields apply a force to a charged particle perpendicular to it's direction of motion. F*V = Deceleration Power = 0. Also worth noting that a charged nanomachine has a much higher mass/charge ratio than the usual charged particles (He2+, H+, and e-), so it would be much less affected.
I was actually thinking of neutralizing the seed at the muzzle to avoid troublesome charge effects.