Do you ever question
the nature of your reality?
Or are you a product of some
complex computer simulation?
What I'm about to tell you
might change the way you perceive the world.
And it all starts with a cosmic megastructure
the size of our Solar System.
We've talked about cosmic
megastructures before,
but this one isn't like any other.
To understand what a Matrioshka Brain is,
and how it could change your outlook on life,
we need to start from the beginning.
In 1960, a physicist and a seeker
for alien life, Freeman Dyson,
came up with the idea that
advanced extraterrestrial civilizations
would build space megastructures
around their host star.
They'd do it to collect all of their star's energy,
and fuel their travels across the Universe.
Or they'd simply use the structure as real estate.
Location, location, location.
Then, almost 50 years later,
an inventor by the name of Robert Bradbury
gave new meaning to Dyson Spheres.
According to his calculations,
by the year 2250, humanity would become
advanced enough to start building a megastructure
similar to the one proposed by Dyson.
But instead of having just one sphere around the Sun,
we'd stack them around one another,
just like the Russian matrioshka dolls.
We'd start with a single Dyson Sphere.
We'd use this first shell to draw energy from the Sun.
A Dyson Sphere would give us so much solar energy,
that it'd be enough to power the most advanced
computer in the Universe.
I told you, a Matrioshka Brain isn't just
any megastructure we could live on.
It's a giant supercomputer the size of the Solar System.
The shells of the Matrioshka Brain
would expand from the orbit of Mercury
beyond the orbit of Neptune.
They'd be passing the energy from the Sun
down to the last outer shell.
We'd have robots mine Venus
for its rocky, silicate mantle,
until there's nothing left of it.
But silicon isn't the only thing we'd need for this construction.
The shells of the Matrioshka Brain would be made
of a material called computronium.
It's a hypothetical material we've yet to invent.
But the idea behind it
is that every particle would be a tiny computer
capable of passing computer codes to other particles.
The Matrioshka Brain would start
writing its own code, building itself,
and expanding far into the Solar System.
It would be capable of calculating
and predicting every event from
human interactions to cosmic occurrences.
It's processing power would have no limits at all.
All this talk about an electronic brain
made me want to learn a little bit more about computers.
So I went to our friends at Brilliant
and read about how computers learn
and store data, even how they see the world.
Brilliant has a collection of interactive courses,
daily challenges, quizzes, and a whole lot more.
They make learning fun.
If I have to stay home any longer,
I might start the course on programming, change my job...
You should try it too.
Go to brilliant.org/whatif and sign up for free.
And if you hurry and you're among
the first 200 people to get to that link,
and you'll get 20% off the annual Premium subscription.
That means unlimited access to every interactive course
including computer science and the math behind gymnastics.
Let's get back to our Matrioshka Brain.
What would it mean for us to have
unlimited computing power?
Building a megastructure like this
would make us a Type II civilization on the Kardashev Scale.
It's a scale that characterizes civilizations
by their energy disposal level.
A Type I civilization is one that's
tamed all of its planet's resources
and can control the weather, earthquakes, even volcanoes.
A Type II civilization can harvest
all the energy of its host star.
With all the energy of the Sun at our disposal,
we could become intergalactic travelers.
We could leave our Solar System,
and go explore what's out there.
We could relocate to other planets if we wanted.
But most likely, that's not where we'd end up.
With the computational power of the Matrioshka Brain,
we could simulate an alternate, digital reality.
We could leave our physical bodies behind,
and upload our brains into that virtual world.
We'd become a new species,
immortal entities with unlimited computing abilities.
We'd create our own universes with our own rules.
Or, maybe we'd recreate our world
and control every aspect of it.
Doesn't this make you question
your entire reality?
Our world might already be a computer simulation,
in which we're nothing more than computer code.
But that's a story for another WHAT IF.