LIGHTCONE — a cosmological simulation

LIGHTCONE

Cosmic time—

Era—

Scale a—

T_CMB—

Hubble H—

Event horizon—

Civilization

No observers yet. The universe is still assembling itself.

Power—

K 0.0

Colonies in contact—

Lost beyond horizon—

Compute temperature—

Energy per bit (kT ln2)—

Thinking rate—

Thoughts—

Galaxies held for good—

Thoughts beyond the horizon—

Insight (unspent)—

Civilizations

Stance when you meet others

Autopilot, playing as

Forecast

Projected final thoughts—

If you keep your current settings (research cheapest-first; furnaces lit once discovered). Each ×N in the panels shows the effect of changing one choice now.

Energy policy

Compute now 80% · store 20%

Stored energy funds probes, research shortfalls and the Baby Universe. Spent later, in a colder universe, each joule buys more thought — the aestivation gambit.

Reserves—

…worth if spent now—

Reserves leak (half-life 200 Gyr). Unburned matter is the only lossless battery — and black holes return what you feed them, via Hawking radiation, at the very end.

Black hole furnaces running

Unburned matter—

Black hole hoard—

Expansion

Reach of this drive—

Auto-launch with the fastest drive

Click a galaxy on the map to send a probe. The cyan circle is what this drive can ever reach; the red circle is the event horizon. Both shrink as space accelerates.

Probes in flight0

Territory (galaxies)

Held for good—

Held, drifting away—

Probes en route to—

Still claimable—

yours lost contact unclaimed other civilization event horizon observable universe

Research costs in bit-ops