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willpittenger
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<p>I just finished reading a book which featured planets that had a mantle and crust made mainly of carbon. These planets, as they compressed, turned the lower layers into a diamond which was doped with various chemicals turning the diamond into a semiconductor. Eventually, as more and more layers were built up, the crust/mantle area becomes a giant CPU. But wait. Each planet was just one of a thousand cores in the computer, each being a independant planet, many in different systems in the same cluster.</p><p>Now, I know this is a science fiction book. We don't have warp drive. Phasers are completely imaginary. Etc. Let's keep such discussion out of this thread and down to what might have been real: The carbon planets and the interconnected computer system.</p><p>Obviously, we don't know how the CPUs would communicate over even trival intersolar distances. Beyond that, where does the real physics end and the imaginary begin?</p><p>Cluster name (might or might not be the name of a real cluster): NGC 6281 (nothing came up in Wikipedia)</p><p><em>Star Trek: The Next Generation: Greater Than the Sum</em><br />Author: Christopher L. Bennet<br />ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-7132-2<br />ISBN-10: 1-4165-7132-9<br />UPC: 9 781516 571322 50799<br />Price: $7.99/$8.50 (Canada)/£6.99</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Will Pittenger<hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Add this user box to your Wikipedia User Page to show your support for the SDC forums: <div style="margin-left:1em">{{User:Will Pittenger/User Boxes/Space.com Account}}</div> </div>