Where is everyone? This workflow runs the complete chain — from how many civilisations the Drake equation predicts, through where the Great Filter sits, through whether aestivation or the MTH is the better strategy, to the concrete compute budget of an ergosphere civilisation in ω Cen.
The Drake equation gives a distribution over N, not a point estimate. Under log-uniform priors — the standard scale-uncertain prior when you don't know the order of magnitude — P(N < 1 in the Milky Way) ≈ 30–55% (Sandberg et al. 2018). Set the biology factor (f_l × f_i combined) and communicating lifetime L; the astrophysics factors are bundled at ~1/yr.
If N is small (Stage 1), nearly all the survival probability must collapse somewhere on the chain. Given that we exist, the question is whether the hard step is behind us (abiogenesis, eukaryogenesis — we got lucky and the future is open) or ahead of us (AI, warfare, climate — we haven't passed it yet).
If the filter is mostly behind us (Stage 2), advanced civilisations exist. Should they aestivate — hibernate until the CMB cools, gaining up to 10³⁰× more compute per joule? Or should they act now via an IMBH ergosphere, which already provides exceptional compute with no waiting? The Sandberg gain and the IMBH ops/sec are computed in parallel here for direct comparison. N from Stage 1 contextualises how many civilisations face this choice.
The MTH ergosphere compute argument requires a real IMBH. The allowed window for ω Cen's candidate spans 8,200–70,000 M☉. This mass determines the BZ power (Stage 5) and the Schwarzschild radius for time dilation.
With mass fixed from Stage 4, spin and magnetic field determine the BZ jet power. This is the energy source the MTH civilisation exploits instead of waiting.
The Landauer limit converts BZ power to ops/sec at operating temperature T. This is the quantitative endpoint of the MTH argument: how much computation can the ergosphere civilisation perform per second?
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