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JoshuaZ comments on UFAI cannot be the Great Filter - Less Wrong Discussion
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This is sort of valid but it is extremely unlikely. Even if expansion occurs at say .99% of light then the problem will still exist. One needs to be expanding extremely close (implausibly close?) to the speed of light for this explanation to work.
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.
Nanobot is hard to de-accelerate, but a robust femtobot might do better.
Hmm, using the femtobot, would it being charged and entering a conductive material slow it down due to that induction thingy, like a magnet dropped down a copper tube? Or maybe having a conductive right shaped bot, and launching it into a ludicrously strong magnetic field of a neutron star or something.?
Another option is to launch a black hole in front of it, and give both the probe and black hole extremely strong negative charge; the black hole will absorb impacting matter (also solving the problem of interstellar dust) slowing it down by averaging, simultaneously clearing a safe path for the probe and gently pushing it back as it gets closer and the charges repel.
Femto? Explain.
The black hole idea is interesting. Does it even have to be a black hole? Any big non-functional absorbent mass at the front would do, right? Maybe only a black hole would be reliable...
Maybe not even a mass. If the probe had a magnetic field, you might be able to do things with the bussard ramjet idea to slow you down and control (charged) collisions.
not very good but good enough: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femtotech
ANd I were just brainstorming, your guess is as good as mine. But yea a tiny neutron star might work.