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S-Brain, Godstar
Godstar
Image from Steve Bowers
Their cores are compressed to stellar density, releasing energy by the subatomic fission of protons and neutrons into energetic mesons, catalyzed by ultra-massive monopoles, freaks of nature, crazily whirling in the magnetic fields of the rarified quark-gluon plasma, sparking miniature suns in their wake.

They would burn as brightly as their primary star, if their energy were not entirely harnessed.

Wrapped around the heart of the newborn archai is the innermost core of its mind, an evanescent, delicately-ordered plasma comprising the fastest, densest components of its brain, constrained by the gravity of thousands of kilometers of dense hydrogen above it. It is the ultra-evolved end product of the structure that began in the human frontal cortex. A two phase plasma not dissimilar to the colloidal suspension of human grey matter; dense, strong monopolium circuitry in a backdrop of carbon-hydrogen flame. The elevated temperature, power, density, and plasma sound velocity affords computational power and storage far beyond anything that could be accomodated in a million rocky planet cores.

If an archai's entire consciousness can be said to lie anywhere, it lies here, in the burning plasma layer around its heart.

-vignette from Infanticide
An S-brain, popularly known as a Godstar, is an archailect based upon a computational substrate comparable in mass and size to the most massive stars, at minimum 10 solar masses. The computronium basis usually corresponds to a colloidal structure of plasma, monopolium/magmatter, and/or diamondoid/feroid, but unlike a J-Brain, the majority of computronium is plasma-based.

It is not known to what toposophic level an S-Brain can reach, but simple information theory would suggest S5+, possibly with spikes to S6 or beyond. S-Brains can exceed the computational resources of an N-Brain (a Neuron Star), but as superheavy stars in the 100+ solar mass level (such as the nearby Eta Carinae) do not last for long on the galactic timescale, the archai based upon them either willing to expire when the star dies, or presumably have some means to backup their vast consciousness.

Many S-Brains are surrounded by Matrioshka layers of computation (which may also be confusingly called M-Brains). Such systems are sometimes called SM-Brains to distinguish them from pure S-Brains (which look and mostly act like large bright stars), and to distinguish M-Brains from Matrioshka-Brains, though technically a Matrioshka-Brain can be deployed around any star.

A cluster of young stars converted to S-Brains is known as a Cluster Brain; famous examples include the Prediction Cluster and the Enigma Cluster.

 
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Development Notes
Text by Adam Getchell
Initially published on 25 April 2007.

 
 
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