5. masheencaug wrote:

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.

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.

5. masheencaug wrote:

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…

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.

3. xantox wrote:…the goal of asking it should be to find a way towards better understanding of reality, rather than to find a way towards immortality.

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…

2. Steve Bowers wrote:

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.

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.

1. masheencaug wrote:

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.

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.

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.