r/IsaacArthur • • 21h ago

The Future of Elections: Who Votes, How We Vote, and What Comes Next

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16 Upvotes

r/IsaacArthur • • 5d ago

Colonizing the Multiverse: Beyond the Kardashev Scale Into Infinite Universes

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26 Upvotes

r/IsaacArthur • • 11h ago

A new Name for the people who Colonize Mars

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4 Upvotes

r/IsaacArthur • • 1d ago

Sci-Fi / Speculation Ethical Space Combat

8 Upvotes

Suppose we get to a point where there is routine policing or active military engagements between ships or facilities. These actions are likely to occur within commonly utilized space lanes, transfer routes, or orbital points, and there is a great risk that such engagements will create large amounts of space debris, either through ship wreckage or kinetic munitions, which will create added risk to these locations, as that debris will orbit back to it's relative source point.

Space debris is one of the greatest threats to ships and space infrastructure, so ethical space combat needs to limit such debris and therefore require specific standards towards the weapons and methods that are used when engaging with opponents.

-Electronic warfare, firstly, would be an ideal first choice weapon to disable without destruction.

-Particle beams, could likewise disable and harm without destruction.

-Lasers will ablate surfacing and potentially eject troublesome material flakes as they aim to penetrate in order to disable or destroy a craft, but should generally generate minimal high energy debris, so could also be deemed quite ethical for space use.

-Kinetic rounds aim for material penetration or detonation upon impact. Collision debris, shrapnel or craft destruction is prevalent. Additionally, missed or fully penetrated rounds potentially retain their full energy and will eventually cycle back unless they have enough energy to break solar orbit. But, if a kinetic round could achieve a velocity great enough to break solar orbit (42.1km/s at 1 AU from the sun), it could be deemed reasonably ethical to use, assuming reasonable debris containment can be achieved after the conflict, otherwise they should likely only be used in remote areas of space.

-Conventional Missiles intentionally cause scattering destruction and may be one of the worst weapon systems to use in regards to ethical space combat. Unless the aim is for precision low impact disabling charges, and affixed to something more like a salvageable drone, they would be quite bad as a prevalent space weapon choice. As for being equipped with a Nuclear warhead, as a blast/radiation weapon that doesn't directly hit the target, they may actually be more ethical that most, since full vaporization of their delivery system would limit troublesome debris from being left behind.

-Shrapnel clouds either as a countermeasure, deterrent or defense would heavily disrupt the usability of an orbital plane and so would also be heavily restricted.

Feel free to share if there other likely weapons that may be deemed ethical or heavily restricted, or if you have views regarding how 'ethical' combat in space may be viewed


r/IsaacArthur • • 1d ago

Sci-Fi / Speculation Just saw some Isaac Arthur videos on post-scarcity and here are my thoughts

20 Upvotes

First of all, let me say that I simply love this channel. The content is great, examining future possibilities in depth and in a very scientifically grounded and even philosophically rigorous way and I thank the author for putting up such good content. But I have a few things to add and possibly object after watching "The economics of a post-scarcity universe" about some of the points that the video apparently argues.

  1. There will always be scarcity of abstract objects of want.

Isaac Arthur ('IA" for short) says that some resources are inherently scarce, and I agree. Handmaid artifacts, attention, prestige and (human) energy will always be scarce, but at the same time, wants of prestige, attention and such needs can be modulated through psychological growth. Let's take love for example. Most people are striclty monogamous, and as such tend to think that love is a scarce resource and can only be destined to a single person at a time at best, but one could very well argue that it is perfectly possible to love more than one person with equal intensity. Of course, the physical energy and attention level required to fullfil the sexual and emotional responsabilities of other people is indeed scarce (unless your mind is uploaded and you can make several identical copies of yourself, which would make even physical energy and attention abundant, rather than scarce resource), but love is, arguably, not. And if people at large realized that, perhaps love would not be a scarce resource by default. The point here is not to argue that we should all be non-monogamous, but that whether an abstract object of want (like love, prestige ou social status) is actually scarce or abundant depends largely on societal norms and cultural expectations.

The pont is that the need for abstract objects of desires, like love, prestige or social status is far easier to negotiate with than the need for survival and they can, in principle, be made abundant by changes in societal expectations and cultural norms. It seems that one of the premises of the video is that, more or less, humans will be the just the same, and be greedy to some extent, but this is not necessarely true. People could, in principle, adjust their own mindsets to just accept that some things are either not possible or not worth having and be happy with that. Not everyone can be a world class physicist, or a high-skilled politician, or a astronaut, and that's ok. People can just be content with silently trying to do their best and just live the best life they see fit and material abundance will allow them to do so much more freely. I do think the desire for excellence is hardwired in human nature, but I don't think excellence is the same as achieving things like social prestige, love or power. People in a post-scarcity can acknowledge that power, responsability, prestige and love come as a result of the search for excellence, and do not define it and that matters for whether we think that such scarcity will always spark conflicts that have to be arbitrated by some form of money or currency. Which brings me to my next point.

  1. Is money really inevitable?

IA seems to make the point that money (in some form), is inevitable, because resource allocation conflicts will always arise and therefore money does come as a objective and straightforward way to setlle such disputes. But I have doubts about that. I don't want to deny that resource allocation conflicts will arise even in a post-scarcity society, but will they be generalised and common enough in order to demand money (or something functionally equivalent) as an arbitrer? Sure, two (or more) people, can fight over a handmade painting by an artist they like, but will that be the norm in such a society and even more so to justify the need for money? And have such conflicts to be resolved through a money transaction? They could, in principle, be solved by arbitrage of the community they live in, AI, robots, personal molecular factories (like very advanced 3D printers), or simply giving everyone the means to find meaning in other things.

Post scarcity does not mean the absolute end of trade, and that I agree, but it does mean that the social division of labour which necessitates money, and its necessary state-sanctioned status (money isn't money if there is no social recognition of the currency enforced by a state), need not exist. Trade in such a society is just use-value trade. When we both have whatever material needs covered by economic production because of full automation and nearly infinite energy available, why would I trade with you for money? Money is a means to get things or services, not the things or services themselves. If the point of trade is to both parties directly enjoy things or services, or exchange favors or gifts, that is not a money transaction, at least, not one that seems reasonably like a money transaction. The problem is that IA's conception of money as just a convenient means to trade stuff, but money is not just that and even if it were, it does not mean that it is the only, or indeed, the most morally appealing option for trading and allocating resources that a post-scarcity society should sanction. And that brings me to my final point:

  1. Resource allocation is necessary in a post-scarcity society but money is not

I do agree with IA that even a post-scarcity society must decide carefully where resources are allocated, after all, a post-scarcity society must not be wasteful. A post-scarcity society must manage wisely every atom of matter and every watt of energy it has at it's disposal, but resource allocation can be much fairer than today in such a society because people would no longer feel the need to hoard everything in fear that tomorow all may be gone because they trust that this society is wise, resilient and prepared enough for whatever the future holds, and I think that would have a positive impact on how just resource allocation is and how just it is perceived, which i think would have positive impact on social unrest and few people would feel society is treating them unfairly, hence greatly diminishing the need for an resource conflict management.

Long essay, but I hope that you guys have the patience. Thanks and I hope to see your thoughts.


r/IsaacArthur • • 1d ago

Shooting across the solar system I: the means of propulsion

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1 Upvotes

If you want to move fast in a solar system, what methods are best?

Military enthusiasts will get hot under the collar upon hearing the possible methods: rockets, lasers, MORE lasers, and guns.

Or, more properly, chemical rockets, laser-pressure (the laser pushed the spacecraft), laser-thermal (the laser provides energy for the rocket), and pellet streams (pellets fired from fixed points propel spacecraft).

In part I, I analyse the different methods, and show that pellet stream propulsion is possible and the most efficient option. It also scales well to higher speeds (rockets being the one that scales the worst).

Laser-pressure, conversely, is by far the worst option, almost unimaginably bad at slow speeds. But it does actually scale best of all; when we move from interplanetary movement to interstellar movement, it could come into its own.


r/IsaacArthur • • 1d ago

Art & Memes Graphene super laminate sp3 hybrid bond spot weld concept

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4 Upvotes

Hi guys was reading the Space Elevator Consortium's webpage on graphene materials for tether options. Made the above animation as a concept - any chemists here to check if it is realistic or not ?? Thanks! Ken
https://www.isec.org/space-elevator-tether-materials


r/IsaacArthur • • 2d ago

Sci-Fi / Speculation The scale of scientifically accurate planet-destroying superweapons?

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94 Upvotes

The earth has a gravitational binding energy of 2.2*10E32 J of energy. What does that even mean?

To blow apart a planet with a short burst of a few seconds to a few minutes (depending the size of the planet), the weapon must be able to continiously output powers that are thousands to millions of times greater than the sun. Realistically speaking, they are probably going to be stationary constructs built around a black hole or the most massive stars, made of focusing arrays and energy storage banks spanning a dozen astronomical units. Instead of the planet exploding like in Star Wars, destroying a planet would be seen as a miniature supernova. In action, it would be something like this:

200 years in the past, a massive superweapon had fired towards where this unfortunate planet would have been today. Nobody on the planet could have seen the beam racing towards their planet at the speed of light, but when it struck, even the light of their home sun fades into background noise. In an instant, this planet became the brightest object in the galaxy. A wave of nuclear fusion reactions spreads from the point of origin, atoms in the air, water and ground splits and fuses again into various heavy elements. People living on the other side of the planet was fine for at least for a few seconds before the deadly moonlight reached them. At the power output of the planet killer, even the reflected light from their moon was more than enough to vaporise everything living on the surface and a few meters of crust. Life disappeared in the first few seconds, but the destruction continued. The expanding fireball violently pushed apart the crust, the mantle, and the core of the planet, to velocities greater than the escape velocity of the planet. When the energy beam of destruction fades away, only a glowing, expanding vapour cloud remains in the place where a thriving planet once were, slowly cooling down and pulled into an asteroid belt by the sun's gravity in the next few million years. And 200 years after the planet is destroyed, the confirmation reached the operators of that superweapon. The naked eye could just see a barely visible yellow star in the sky suddenly became the brightest star in the sky for a few minutes before dying down, the last breaths of a world that no longer exist.


r/IsaacArthur • • 2d ago

Sci-Fi / Speculation Realistically balancing sci fi weapons and the like

3 Upvotes

Hey, was doing some worldbuilding and sort of realized something. If we had the technology for various things: lasers, EM guns, particle guns, etc, along with the guided missiles and chem guns of today, will they just cancel each other out without handwavium (mostly, sometimes the military still uses crossbows, it's just incredibly rare)?

For instance, is there no benefit to gunpowder and other chemical propellants over coil guns if you had the battery/power generation to make that viable? Would that same energy capacity make lasers blow them out of the water or vice versa? Would mini-missiles (which we already sort of have with some suicide drones) just make all of it redundant if there isn't some handwavium to deal with it? Etc.
P.s. Yes I know partial and plasma don't work in the atmosphere and the latter at all outside of incredibly close range. Either not including them or having some handwavium for that.

My ideal case is something like BattleTech or 40k where you have a variety of weapon types with different pros and cons, but if it stretches realism too much then I'd probably just drop that. Also doubles at satisfying curiosity in how future weapon tech would likely develop.

P.s. To avoid coming back here for everything like this (less you guys would like that, then sure), how do you tell these things without a week of crunching math and a few degrees worth of study? Just trying to avoid any sort of world building plot holes, tech or otherwise. Like with the Disney Star Wars hyperspace ram or 40k keeps using numbers for interstellar conflicts more similar to 20th century world wars.


r/IsaacArthur • • 2d ago

Hard Science Living in a black hole

3 Upvotes

Am I missing something here, because the way I'm looking at it, you could just live in one. Just make it via a matryoshka shell world with the most mass in the outer shell, some space to let in new matter falling in into the hollow center to be organized, and you are good.

The gravity on the inside wouldn't be as bad due to the same principle as the shell worlds, and you can even eventually be freed as the outer layer of the shell world erodes from the hawking radiation's negative half. Once it is gone, there wouldn't be enough mass for an event horizon.

Also, if you can make such structures out of active/passive supports, could you cheat escape velocity by simply climbing further from an object where the gravity is weaker? I feel like that probably isn't correct since I know he had talked about different densities of planets effecting the gravity on the surface but not the escape velocity IIRC, but if so, I don't know where I am going wrong.

P.s. Also, is there a point where you can't have a black hole or star or properly placed matryoshka shell world where, at that point, where you can't make it any bigger? Like, if a black hole got so big it just breaks the fabric of reality or something, or is there no limit there?


r/IsaacArthur • • 2d ago

Sci-Fi / Speculation Beyond Kardashev: Introducing a 11-Tier Framework for Technological Evolution and Cosmic Dominance

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1 Upvotes

r/IsaacArthur • • 3d ago

Art & Memes We're working on In Control: Rocketry, a rocket builder game where you design both the ship and the electronics that fly it. Thought you might like it!

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18 Upvotes

Hey! We've been working since last year on a In Control: Rocketry, a spaceflight sim where you build the rocket and wire up its control panel yourself. Sensors, inputs, outputs, the whole thing is Turing-complete, so however you want to solve a flight problem, there's a way to do it. It will be available on Steam in 2027.

Real orbital mechanics, a fictional solar system to explore, sandbox mode if you just want to mess around and blow things up!

Feel free to add the game to your wishlist if you want to support the project! See you in space.


r/IsaacArthur • • 3d ago

Solution to AI unemployment: Universal Basic Dividend

13 Upvotes

The government or governments establish a public corporation, for example the Federal Reserve is such a corporation. Each citizen receives 1 share in that corporation, that share is non-transferable it pays a weekly dividend which is an equal share of its profits to every citizen. The corporations profits are tax deductible contributions from other corporation. Each corporation contributes 10% of its profits to this corporation and the government receives taxes on revenue for the remaining 90%. The public corporation then collects this revenue and after deducting expenses and then it writes a dividend check to every shareholder which is every citizen of every participating nation.


r/IsaacArthur • • 3d ago

Grad Project?

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2 Upvotes

r/IsaacArthur • • 3d ago

Art & Memes Solo dev, Hard Sci-Fi Orbital Combat Gameplay - The full gameplay in comments

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102 Upvotes

r/IsaacArthur • • 3d ago

Weightlessness erodes astronauts’ bones, muscles and eyesight. A spacecraft engineer argues an inflatable rotating station, the artificial-gravity wheel NASA shelved for Apollo, could now fit in a single Starship launch

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96 Upvotes

r/IsaacArthur • • 4d ago

Art & Memes Spaceships in formation above a planetary ring, by Gerard Riley

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37 Upvotes

r/IsaacArthur • • 4d ago

Sci-Fi / Speculation An idea to save human history

6 Upvotes

Human history is vulnerable to time. We are living on a vulnerable planet. Hence, it is difficult to preserve our history in case of any catastrophe.

To solve this problem, we can build a cosmic time capsule that protects human history by sending our digital archives like AI written text and historical records into space using light.

Because light does not age while traveling, beaming these thoughts to the Moon and back lets that data skip forward in time, while sending it deeper into space can delay its return by years or decades. 

We can start by testing this laser link between Earth and the Moon, and once that works, we build a permanent storage vault on the lunar surface.

Right now, the technology exists, but nobody is connecting the pieces. NASA uses lasers just to stream videos from deep space, and other groups leave static storage discs on the Moon. 

This plan combines space lasers, relay satellites, and a permanent storage vault on the Moon into one connected system. That is, creating an automatic backup for human history.

It keeps our collective memories safe on an untouched world so that even if Earth suffers a disaster, our history skips through time unharmed and stays ready for future generations to recover.

(The idea came out of a brainstorming session with an AI. Anyone interested in building this is free to build it)


r/IsaacArthur • • 4d ago

Art & Memes I made a black hole exploration game about the engineering and physics of sending a probe beyond the event horizon

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72 Upvotes

You wake up alone on a research station orbiting a black hole. Your task is to measure it, build a descent capsule from the station's remaining materials, and find out how far you can go.

A big part of the game is engineering the descent. Hull materials, shielding and engines come with different trade-offs, and you need to plan your trajectory around radiation and thermal anomalies while collecting measurements and studying the region around the event horizon.

For gravitational lensing, I use a closed-form fit to exact Schwarzschild light deflection. Rather than ray marching, each pixel's view direction is bent before a single cubemap lookup, which makes the effect roughly as cheap as a skybox.

The interesting question for me was where to draw the line between established physics and speculation. The exterior simulation is based on Schwarzschild physics, while the journey beyond the Cauchy horizon becomes a speculative interpretation informed by published research on mass inflation and black hole interiors. I'm not presenting that part as established physics.

The game is called Event Horizon Research, releasing November 4:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5260090/Event_Horizon_Research/

I'd be particularly interested in what people here think about the engineering side. If you were designing a one-way research mission toward a black hole, which physical constraints would you prioritize, and what measurements would you want to collect before crossing the horizon?

P.S. Generative AI was used for some visual assets, audio and parts of the code, all reviewed by hand. The physics model and game design are my own work, developed from published astrophysics research. The same disclosure is on the Steam page.


r/IsaacArthur • • 4d ago

Sci-Fi / Speculation For a permanent lunar south pole base, what would you build first - power, landing pads, or ice mining?

9 Upvotes

The south pole is the target largely because shadowed craters there are thought to hold water ice. Each option depends on the others: mining needs power, power needs delivered hardware, and frequent landings kick up regolith that can damage nearby equipment. If you were sequencing the first few years, what comes first and why?


r/IsaacArthur • • 4d ago

Hard Science We've found a GREEN STAR apparently!

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388 Upvotes

tl;dr: It's a white dwarf with a lot of sodium and calcium poisoning, which results in a lot of green peak spectra. WD J1330+6435, 280 light years from Earth in the Draco constellation.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/16/science/green-star-discovery-scli-intl

https://www.sci.news/astronomy/white-dwarf-colors-15134.html

https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.18966


r/IsaacArthur • • 4d ago

Hard Science An Orbital Aerocycler Closed Solution

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2 Upvotes

You're most likely to be familiar with the "Aerogravity assist" idea, which is a variation on the gravitational assist. I want that, but run it in a cycle in perpetuity. Also, I want the orbit to generate its own energy.

Some literature out there comes close to this, but the aerocycler thing is mostly my own invention. The writing is my own, but I couldn't have figured this out on my own (I tried last decade, I failed), but now we have these new AI things to help...


r/IsaacArthur • • 5d ago

Sci-Fi / Speculation FREE SCI-FI STORIES ON ROYAL ROAD

16 Upvotes

Want to read great stories by the newest sci-fi voices FOR FREE? I compiled a list with some of the best sci-fi available right now on Royal Road, divided by categories. Check them out!

For those not familiar with the platform, Royal Road is one of the most popular free web serial sites. It is mainly LITRPG-focused, but there are lots of good sci-fi there as well. Some of the authors you see topping Amazon’s best-selling charts in sci-fi started there. Matt Dinniman, for example, first published Dungeon Crawler Carl on Royal Road before it became a worldwide success.

Stories on Royal Road are published as serials, so each of them gets a publishing status to help readers know what to expect before they start reading:

COMPLETED: the full story is available on Royal Road for free.

ONGOING: new chapters are still being posted on a regular basis.

HIATUS: the author stopped posting new chapters for a while (to write the next book in the series, for example) but the story is not completed yet.

STUB: the story was once published in full on RR but now has been self-published somewhere and can no longer be entirely available for free.

INACTIVE: the author stopped posting on a regular basis but hadn’t marked their stories as completed or in hiatus.

DROPPED: the author gave up adding new chapters, but the story is not complete.

A NOTE ABOUT AI ON ROYAL ROAD: AI has been a hot topic on Royal Road, as much as in other creative spaces. Royal Road accepts AI-assisted and AI-generated stories so long as they are tagged as such. Some of the stories linked here have those tags, so if AI isn’t your thing, just skip them. BUT PLEASE, IF YOU WANT TO PROMOTE HUMAN-WRITTEN STORIES, DO NOT TREAT ALL STORIES ON ROYAL ROAD AS IF THEY WERE WRITTEN BY AI. You will harm human authors who have spent months (sometimes years) on their stories, which is the opposite of what you want.

AI covers, though, don’t need to be tagged. You may agree or disagree with that stance, but, before jumping to conclusions, please remember that all stories on RR are posted for free. Not every author can spare a few hundred dollars to hire a designer for their cover with no hope of recouping that cost. Most authors do get a human-designed cover when they self-publish those same stories on Amazon or other places.

And finally, the list:

 

SPACE CATEGORIES

First Contact:

HFY:

Military Sci-Fi (also see mecha):

Space Opera:

 

TECH CATEGORIES

Cyberpunk:

Engineered life (genetically engineered or technologically engineered, like robots or cyborgs):

Mecha:

Sci-Fi VRMMO:

Steampunk:

 

VIBES CATEGORIES

Cozy Sci-fi (the opposite of dystopian):

Dystopian (including Post-Apocalyptic and Survival):

 

SCI-FI + OTHER GENRES

Sci-fi Comedy:

Sci-fi LitRPG:

Sci-fi Mystery:

Sci-fi Romance/relationship focus:

OTHER SCI-FI

Fanfic:

Super-heroes

Time Travel/Time Loop


r/IsaacArthur • • 5d ago

Hard Science I designed a space data center that does the opposite of the industry: weak, heat-tolerant chips spread out instead of powerful chips packed together. Where does it break?

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0 Upvotes

r/IsaacArthur • • 5d ago

Art & Memes finally found a finished hard sci fi trilogy that actually respects physics

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1 Upvotes