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Moonbrain, M-Brain
Moonbrain
Image from Selden Ball and DALL-E3
A high transapient or minor archailect based upon a computational substrate comparable in mass and size to a small moon or rocky core of a planet, typically in the 1X1021 kilogram range. The computronium basis usually corresponds to a highly ordered metastable material structure, with diamondoid or corundumoid being the most common.

If a moonbrain is constructed using an existing moon or small planet, the resulting object may include portions of the original object in its original form - sometimes a core of moonrock remains at the centre of the moonbrain, or a crust of apparently inert rock surrounds the processing substrate, or both. Moonbrains which are concealed beneath a layer of native rock are quite common, but they often have issues associated with waste heat management.
Moon Brain
Image from Steve Bowers
A typical moon brain orbiting a Jovian class planet
The first S:3 level transapients were housed inside moon-brains of around a thousand kilometres in diameter. In more recent eras, S:3 transapients which run on substrates designed by higher-level archailects are generally much smaller.

A very active moonbrain may use plasma processing to increase its speed of thought and data density, in which case the energy requirements of the processors would be very high, and the brain may glow brightly due to waste heat emission.

Moonbrain
Image from Steve Bowers
If a moon-brain is fully active, its processors can emit a very significant amount of waste heat; this example has extended numerous cooling loops to increase its surface area and allow heat to be radiated away more efficiently.

Some moonbrains are very difficult to detect as such, since they operate at low power and emit little heat. These are generally transapient entities that are largely inactive for unknown reasons, and they outwardly resemble natural moons. The class of transapient known as Slow Gods are typical of this sort of entity.

Moon Brain
Image from Steve Bowers
A moderate sized, largely inactive moonbrain orbiting a cryojovian world
 
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Appears in Topics
ComputronicsISOtechTransapientech / Godtech / Clarketech
 
Development Notes
Text by Adam Getchell
Additional material Steve Bowers
Initially published on 21 August 2005.

 
Additional Information
White Paper dealing with the physics of Intelligent Super-Objects;
The Physics of Information Processing Superobjects: Daily Life among the Jupiter Brains
 
 
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