These six short pages introduce the main physical constraints behind Eventide 2540. Each poses a question, gives a numerical answer and links to a detailed explanation.
They begin with black holes as heat sinks and end with the communication delays of a large mind.
- The black hole is not your freezer: the coldest thing around can swallow almost none of your heat.
- Power is cheap, cooling is the economy: lighting a petawatt takes 0.11 kg of gas a second, and getting rid of the heat takes 43 Earths of radiator surface.
- A gram is a fortune: a year of the Vigil's first power has a mass equivalent of 350,000 kg, less than a loaded freight train.
- Bits travel, atoms do not: a mind crosses the gap between stars for 9.5 seconds of link time, and the seed took 297 years.
- Colder is faster: every tenfold drop in temperature buys ten times more forgetting, and so more thinking, from the same joule.
- Big minds are slow minds: light sets the speed limit on a thought, and a swarm-sized thought takes minutes.
Prefer to wander? The map of topics shows how everything connects.