Escaping from the end of the universe
xantox, 1 January 2007 in PhilosophyOther Languages:
Most theories predict that at some time in the future, matter, structures, and/or the universe will have an end. Protons could decay within about 1050 years according to Grand Unification theories.1 The whole universe should approach an absolute zero temperature within 10100 years, even black holes having evaporated.2 And time itself could have an end, in a final imploding big-crunch singularity3 or in a diverging expansion cutting the universe in smaller and smaller chunks up to each particle.4 If a form of intelligent life would still exist by such times (certainly not based on current biology), how could it adapt to handle such fundamental limits?
Living systems could optimize toward less redundancy and less energy consumption. However, such optimizations being finite, they would not solve the problem, unless time happens to be infinite.56
In end-of-time singularity scenarios, life could try to slow down perceived time by thinking faster. For example, the same amount of thinking and experience of billion years of human life could happen in a second. However, the energy required would accordingly increase, and physical time would subjectively slow down but not stop. In order to make eternity fit into a finite time interval, so as to escape an end of time singularity, infinitesimally small durations should exist, but time could be discrete at Planck scales, and even if it was not, infinite amount of energy would need to be pumped in the “eternity” process, so as it cannot happen “before” the singularity. Some argue that it could happen “during” the singularity itself.7
So how to escape the system? Logically this should be impossible. However, the system could prove to be more deep and resourceful than we perceive it today.
My favorite dream is about an infinite “sub-time”, perfectly still into each instant of time, where life could ultimately translate itself. There is also the idea of a cyclical universe,8 where the same finite combinatories of experience would come up again and again, which is similar, as if the whole universe was cyclical, time included, then it would not cycle within time but within another variable, so there would be no way to make a difference within time between it being cycling or not cycling. The same would apply if we live in a multiverse, like the one modeled by the chaotic inflation theory, where any singularity is local and the multiverse is made of a non-countable infinity of inflationary domains.9
So this fundamental question appears to be an introductory question about the nature and meaning of time.
- H. Georgi, S. L. Glashow, “Unity of All Elementary-Particle Forces“, Phys. Rev. Lett. 32, 438-441 (1974) [↩]
- S. W. Hawking, “Particle creation by black holes“, Comm. Math. Phys., 43, 3, 199-220 (1975) [↩]
- Although there is experimental evidence for an universe presently undergoing an accelerated expansion, the dark energy could still be an oscillating scalar field leading to future recollapse [↩]
- R. R. Caldwell, M. Kamionkowski, N. N. Weinberg, “Phantom Energy and Cosmic Doomsday“, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91 (2003). [↩]
- F. J. Dyson, “Time without end: Physics and biology in an open universe“, Rev. Mod. Phys. 51, 447 - 460 (1979) [↩]
- K. Freese, W. H. Kinney, “The Ultimate Fate of Life in an Accelerating Universe“, Phys. Lett. B 558, 1-8 (2003) [↩]
- F. Tipler, “The Physics of Immortality“, Anchor (1997) [↩]
- P. J. Steinhardt, N. Turok, “A Cyclic Model of the Universe“, Science, 296, 5572, 1436 - 1439 (2002) [↩]
- A. Linde, “Eternally Existing Self-Reproducing Chaotic Inflationary Universe“, Phys. Lett. B175, 395 (1986) [↩]
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19 February 2007, 6:19 pm
Wonderful thoughts, and I like the idea of thinking faster. However, while it is natural for a living being to act in self-preservation, it is also natural for everything to die. Perhaps life is not meant to go forever, just as the (current) universe isn’t. I suggest we find solace in the fact that at some point this existence will end, and there will be ultimate peace. Of course, we can also hope for the best and expect future life forms to discover a way out of extinction.
20 February 2007, 2:52 pm
Here is Freeman Dyson’s take on survival at the end of the universe, which you may be familiar with [edit: Oh, yes; I see you have referenced Dyson at the end there. Just reading Freese amd Kinney now.]
Another idea I have heard but can’t find a link to is that the universe will expand until there is one particle or less in each Hubble volume, then that will be the effective end of our universe; but eventually random quantum fluctuations of all magnitudes will occur in the remaining empty space, including but not limited to the formation of a new universe. I don’t think this idea is compatible with brane theory, by the way, but you never know.
If this idea is correct, all we have to do is wait for untold googols of years and a new universe will arise.
20 February 2007, 6:28 pm
Thank you. It is indeed natural for men to die, but it is also natural for life to regenerate and propagate. But while this kind of boundary question is far from being settled, the goal of asking it should be to find a way towards better understanding of reality, rather than to find a way towards immortality.
20 February 2007, 6:33 pm
You’re probably referring to recent work by L. Baum, P. H. Frampton, “Turnaround in cyclic cosmology” (2006), arxiv:hep-th/0610213, which is another implementation of the cyclical universe idea within the framework of a brane world.
This speculation, partly inspired by the Steinhard-Turok model, is also based on the kind of accelerating expansion studied in (4), which would have the effect of returning the universe into a pristine vacuum state, but in addition, the divergence singularity is replaced by a branching into infinite deflating and then re-inflating universes.
21 February 2007, 4:35 am
Thank you, I understand your point and agree that a more complete understanding of time would benefit us far greater in the short run than a solution to the problem of escaping a dying universe. However, the implications are greater than the challenge at hand, and any ultimate solution would provide such a monumental manipulation of time that the future would not even matter. Hence, the answer to escaping the end of the universe through an infinite pause or loop in time is really secondary to the result of immortality.
I have a question: if the universe has reached a state of zero mass, zero energy and zero motion, has time stopped? Isn’t time a function of relative motion? If time has stopped, how is it possible that anything beyond that can happen? Perhaps the universe never actually reaches such a state, only to a substantial degree of it. Still, the question of time remains…
22 February 2007, 4:17 am
The idea of immortality is built over common sense theories of reality, time, and identity of the self, which are probably wrong and illusory. When one tries seriously to reach the former objective, one ends up deepening the latter theories. But when one deepens the latter theories, one also loses the original meaning of the former objective, as if the road was suddenly making a turn and the original problem disappearing from the landscape.
There is always a quantum mechanical uncertainty so that one can never say that there is zero mass-energy or zero momentum flow at any point in spacetime. Universal end-of-time scenarios are those where classical time vanishes from the theory, by a singularity affecting all space.
22 February 2007, 5:43 am
Thank you for answering my question - I actually suspected that to be the answer after thinking about it some more. Spacetime by definition would never be void of quantum uncertainty and fluctuation.