Hello, SFIA audio listeners. In this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory,

we're asked at the reason alien civilizations might be rare is because most aliens are huge.

To hear it and every episode early and ad-free, plus hours of bonus content,

check out go.nebola.tv slash Isaac Arthur and use my code, Isaac Arthur.

We talk a lot about the cloud, but few people mean it literally.

That might be changing.

Recently, Jeff Bezos predicted that within a decade or two, we'll see gigawatt-scale

data centers in orbit, vast computing platforms circling the Earth, powered directly by

sunlight.

Sam Altman, head of Open AI, went a step further am used about building an entire Dyson

sphere of computer nodes around the Sun, a literal solar system-scale AI engine.

To many, that sounds like science fiction, but channel regulars, that sounds like a Machiosca brain, a type

of megastructure devoted computation that runs on a star in its basement. And we were just

talking a few days ago about how you get a Dyson-scale economy to ramp up, so the comment

from Altman made me feel like it was a good topic for us today. For many, it sounds like science fiction, and perhaps a full Cardyshev 2 megacomputer still is,

but there's a deeper point here.

Space-based computation might not just be a tech novelty or a distant goal.

It could be the next great industry that jumpstarts our long-term expansion beyond Earth.

Because if asteroid mining and space-based solar power were the early contenders for

kickstart a self-stained space economy, overall data centers may be joining their ranks.

So grab a drink and a snack and let's dive in.

The Cloud Above the Clouds.

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