Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Astrochicken is the name given to a thought experiment expounded by theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson. In his book Disturbing the Universe, Dyson contemplated how humanity could build a small, self-replicating automaton that could explore space more efficiently than a manned craft could. He attributed the general idea to John von Neumann, based on a lecture von Neumann gave in 1948 entitled The General and Logical Theory of Automata. Dyson expanded on von Neumann's automata theories and added a biological component to them. Astrochicken, Dyson explained, would be a one-kilogram spacecraft unlike any before it. It would be a creation of the intersection of biology, artificial intelligence and modern microelectronics a blend of organic and electronic components. Astrochicken would be launched by a conventional spacecraft into space, like an egg being laid into space. Astrochicken would then hatch and start growing a solar energy collector.

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