There Is a Finite Limit On How Long Intelligence Can Exist In Our Universe

StartsWithABang writes: The heat death of the Universe is the idea that increasing entropy will eventually cause the Universe to arrive at a uniformly, maximally disordered state. Every piece of evidence we have points towards our unfortunate, inevitable trending towards that end, with every burning star, every gravitational merger, and even every breath we, ourselves, take. Yet even while we head towards this fate, it may be possible for intelligence in an artificial form to continue in the Universe for an extraordinarily long time: possibly for as long as a googol years, but not quite indefinitely. Eventually, it all must end.

Comments

What joy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Happy Sunday, everyone!

Re:What joy!

[theshowmecanuck]

Highly welcomed sarcasm. Best first post I've seen in a long time.

Re:What joy!

[StikyPad]

On the upside, there is a finite limit to how long stupidity can exist in the universe!

Well that's depressing.

[Anonymous Coward]

But not really, because there's an unfathomable amount of time until this matters and humanity are some determined sons of bitches.

Life finds a way?

Re:Well that's depressing.

[geekmux]

But not really, because there's an unfathomable amount of time until this matters and humanity are some determined sons of bitches.

Life finds a way?

Speaking of a determined son of a bitch, you let me know when you find anything that can survive a black hole.

Re:Well that's depressing.

[jellomizer]

In general human intelligence tries to turn back natural entropy. And we are getting better at it.
I expect given time and we don't kill ourselves out of some silly social/political disagreements we cold in time find ways to "repair" the universe.

Re:Well that's depressing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, everything we could possibly do would just hasten the process.

Re:Well that's depressing.

[ShanghaiBill]

Black holes dissipate over time.

Yes, but very slowly. A black hole of one solar mass would take about 2e67 years to evaporate through Hawking radiation. The time to evaporate goes up as the cube of the mass, and some black holes are 10 billion solar masses, so they would take more than 1e97 years to evaporate.

Any current black hole with a mass larger than earth's moon would actually be growing, since the cosmic microwave background being absorbed is more than the Hawking radiation being emitted. They will not start to shrink until the universe cools off and the CMB dissipates, far in the future.

Re:Well that's depressing.

[ShanghaiBill]

In general human intelligence tries to turn back natural entropy. And we are getting better at it.

Only within limits. Think of human ignorance as a doughnut. It is shrinking because the "hole" of things we are learning to do is expanding. But it is also shrinking from the outside as we learn more and more things that are impossible to do. The more human knowledge grows, the more confirmation there is that some things, such as faster than light travel, reversing entropy, etc. are fundamentally impossible.

Re:Well that's depressing.

[BarbaraHudson]

Nope. Intelligence may be limited, but there's no sign that stupidity isn't infinite :-) The heat death just goes to show how stupid (lack of information storage because there's no energy differential) the universe will be.

Re:Well that's depressing.

[Megane]

What's really depressing is what that intelligence in an artificial form will actually be.

Re:Well that's depressing.

[KGIII]

Information.

Re:Well that's depressing.

[Megol]

So then we have a long lasting energy source!

Re:Well that's depressing.

[ShanghaiBill]

So then we have a long lasting energy source!

Yes, very long. But a solar mass black hole would have a temperature of 60 nano-Kelvins, and would emit 1e-30 watts. If you used all the emitted energy from the black hole to charge a AA battery, many of the protons in the battery might decay before it is fully charged (assuming protons have a half-life of ~1e33 years, which has not been experimentally verified).

Re:Well that's depressing.

[Richard Dick Head]

Or the more stuck folks get in the same old ideas. Faster than light travel is not impossible, it is just impossible to measure if you constrain yourself to a single reference point.

And then there is brain dead simple stuff, like "dark matter", which happens to be so red- or blueshifted that we can't directly observe its existence. How hard is that grasp? Yet no one does.

Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[Anonymous Coward]

Eventually, it all must end.

Prove it. What's to say we don't figure out a way to harness cosmic expansion or the other 90% of the universe's energy in the vacuum and create a pocket dimension that traverses a Kerr black hole so that we wave to ourselves leaving before we enter the event horizon in an infinite loop?

Prove (mem)Brane theory is wrong, and we don't discover that dark matter is simply the universe next-door some number of us will be able to hop to, perhaps by constructing duplicates in the neighboring universes, and thus propagating across the megaverse (or true universe, since the brane world would then be considered the universal encapsulation medium).

For fuck's sake we haven't even figured out what happens at the event horizon of a black hole, let alone the singularity. For all we know every single galaxy has a super massive gateway to another universe at its center.

I'm not saying that the heat death won't end all intelligent life in this universe, just that it might not.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[Crashmarik]

Cosmologists know everything
Just ask them.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[Crashmarik]

Seriously ? Once again we have an article that is pushing ignorance as wisdom. The truth is we can't say all that much with great certainty about the deep future or the deep past for that matter. We are still limited by our rather incomplete understanding. This situation is no different than Kelvin insisting the earth was between 20 and a 100 million years old based on his deep knowledge of thermodynamics but incomplete knowledge of physics.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[swb]

The parent posters' theories may be crackpot or science fiction, but it does seem that in absolute terms our knowledge of cosmology, while well grounded in theory, seems awfully speculative especially given our level of understanding of basic forces like gravity, let alone find concrete, experimentally verifiable theories for the beginning/end of the Universe.

I would argue that the size and timescales are also so vast relative to both our individual existence and existence as a species that we might not be able to ever really know with any certainty, nor would the answers matter.

It's like being in 4th grade and trying to develop meaningful theories on when and where you will retire in your late 60s. Not only do you not know enough facts to answer the question substantively, it's so far away that knowing or not knowing isn't really relevant and much of it hinges on unrelated consequences of events that we don't know and haven't experienced yet.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[execthis]

I had this odd reflection recently: If you and your entire species never had eyesight, how would you know anything about light?

Think about this a minute. We know what light is so it seems extremely obvious. In fact, it almost *defines* what we mean by knowing in the first place: "To see the light"... "To illuminate" "Elucidate" Etc. Light is so synonymous with knowing, understanding, being aware of that we cannot just divorce our self from understanding it, or see from a perspective of there not being light (see? I can't even say a phrase like this without invoking light!).

But really think about it, and now think that there could be things in the Universe just like light which we simply do not have organs to perceive. How can we understand it? We have no conceptual framework for it perhaps. But it might be there. And it might be obvious - so obvious if we were beings who perceived it that it would be impossible to imagine existence being without it.

We are the primal tool. Just as Kant understood the limitations of knowing are intimately related with there already being the capacity to know inherent in the mind, so to the ultimate horizon of our understanding is primordially determined by our very being.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[swb]

I've heard a few good lectures on ontology and epistemology and every time I'm struck by the level of assumption and interpretation in what we know.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[Dukenukemx]

I believe that big bangs occur multiple times throughout the universes history. A giant hyper massive black hole gets big enough that it explodes like the big bang. There might be other hyper massive black holes that are pulling on galaxy's far away and might explain dark energy. Black holes are the universes recycling centers. Life may have existed far before 13.5 billion years ago and the universe maybe infinite.

Course that's just and idea I came up with.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[Jamu]

It's a consequence of the laws of statistical thermodynamics: That entropy always increases. There is a practically zero chance of entropy decreasing, and intelligence would need to exist in an area of decreasing entropy all the time. The chance of this is zero. Boltzmann brains are consequence of entropy decreasing, but these would survive for even shorter periods on average, as the universe they exist in will be closer to maximum entropy (on average).

One exception I can see to this, is if the state space of the universe increases. If it does then a maximum entropy state might never be reached. Anyone know enough about inflation and gravity to say if this is true for a universe that increases in size?

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[turbidostato]

"But really think about it, and now think that there could be things in the Universe just like light which we simply do not have organs to perceive."

I don't need to think. I *know* for certain that we don't have organs to percieve most of the electromagnetic spectrum, only a very short range we know as "light" and "heat".

"How can we understand it? We have no conceptual framework for it perhaps."

Maybe not. What a joy it would be if we could fathom something we could call -I'm going wildly speculative here so forgive me, microwaves, radio spectrum, cosmic rays, atomic particles. We might be able to sort all that knowledge by means of some also unfathomable concepts I for one may call Mathematics...

But let's go back to earth again and forget about all those unthinkable things.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[execthis]

As if there is knowing to know. Maybe its just a matter of the presencing of being as it is revealed to us. We are only that which, in our very being, comports towards our own being.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[execthis]

No.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[onepoint]

I try every few years to "Feel" things differently :

Last year was Ultra-Violet light, it was amazing that with a UV-flashlight a neighbors garden was weird and wonderful

a few year back I hooked up headphones and tried listening to 30HZ sounds and below, could feel them but not hear them
and it seemed to make me feel sick.

I walk around with a blindfold a lot, makes me listen better

I try writing with my left hand and use tools ... their is almost no tools make for left handed people

this years test, I read somewhere that learning to discriminate time accurately is very hard to do.
So I bought an egg timer, and I am going to learn what 5 minutes really is. kinda like that ST-TNG where data try's to boil water.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[onepoint]

No, your wrong. You need to ask the question carefully to Chuck Norris and observe ( from a safe distance ) the leg-kick-sweep

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[X0563511]

We would still be able to sense radiative heat, so I don't think not having vision would be enough to blind us (heh) to the presence of light (as light is just a different wavelength of electromagnetic radiation).

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[Camel Pilot]

Right... I suspect that intelligence continues by spawning new universes with properties amenable to life and ultimately intelligence. Obviously the disproof that "Eventually, it all must end" is that something and intelligence exists now! The OP hypothesis contains an implied assertion in that this known universe is a one-off event that happened and now is just sputtering itself to its inevitable end - totally egocentric. If it were the case that entropy is inexorable, in an infinite time line it would have already happened and there would only be homogeneity.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[Tablizer]

What's to say we don't figure out a way to harness cosmic expansion or the other 90% of the universe's energy in the vacuum and create a pocket dimension that traverses a Kerr black hole so that we wave to ourselves leaving before we enter the event horizon in an infinite loop?

Only a slashdotter would dream up infinite dupes

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[cfalcon]

It's very fair to point out that we could be missing something. In fact, we almost assuredly are! But it seems very unlikely to be something as fundamental as light.

If you were a member of a species that never used light in any way, you would eventually run into some phenomena that would require the experimental testing of this. For instance, your species would have dealt with heat through antiquity, and something very hot can transmit heat over a distance- but if you assumed this was all a fluid, or the movement of small particles, you would still be left with a big experimental gap between your model and reality- because some heat is transferred as infrared, even through a vacuum where conduction and convection can't explain it. The gaps in science would become even more apparent as you got more advanced. You would need a concept of radiation to explain almost anything.

So we are left with :
1)- Phenomena that primarily exist far away- for instance, black holes could literally have any amount of strange shit going on in them, or actually be organisms, or whatever else. It's not your first rational guess, but we can't preclude as much as we would like, because we only have some of the data about them that we would like.
2)- Phenomena that exist in trivial measure, but could be important. For instance, we don't have the ability to perceive neutrinos, but they ended up being a detectable and real particle/something. Something like this could be waiting for the particle physicists, we can only hope.

These can be really important, but the problem is that things that are tiny or far away are by no means guaranteed to have huge effects on humans. Mostly, we are interested in creating, preserving, and ending life, so we mostly try to push our discoveries in that direction- and not every phenomena seems to be useful towards any of those goals.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[cfalcon]

Don't be jackass. He's obviously eccentric. In the huge percentage case, he'll find nothing but personal amusement from this, at a real cost of time and money. But if he discovers something cool, you'll be lining up to slob his knob. He's playing a lottery with his time and money, but he's buying a ticket for society, not himself.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[Altrag]

This question itself is very anthropocentric -- you have to define "eyesight," which is already based on our human experience of the world.

But if you break it down, "eyesight" is just specific cells reacting in specific manners to specific wavelengths of photons.

If you're in a system with little to no light, you simply wouldn't evolve that type of cell. Deep earth creatures are already known to have no eyes (or just have vestigial eyes left over from when their ancestors first crawled down a hole.)

Similarly, sound is just specific cells evolved to recognize specific compression waves in the air (primarily, though they work in other mediums to some extent of course.) If we evolved in a medium that didn't transmit sound very easily, we probably wouldn't have ears.

Smell (and taste) is specific cells evolved to recognize specific types of chemical composition. If we evolved in a world that didn't have so many unique chemicals (or they were so mixed together that everything would always "smell" the same) then we probably wouldn't have a sense of smell.

Lungs are specific cells evolved to process oxygen. If we didn't live in an oxygen-rich world, we wouldn't have lungs (fish already don't have lungs, though gills are also designed to process oxygen, just in a different manner.)

Now how exactly an intelligence that developed without any recognition of light would figure out what a photon is or what its properties are, I have no idea. And I doubt anyone else does either since we've got no baseline to even begin to make such guesses. But assuming such an intelligence could develop deep scientific understanding, they'll eventually run into the fact that photons are a natural part of atomic interactions.

You could similarly ask yourself how a species that can't "see" quarks would be able to develop a theory of quarks and gluons. That is, our species. Well simply, we use what we have and extrapolate solutions for things that don't "work" given our current understanding, then figure out ways to test if those solutions match reality.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[Altrag]

If the expansion of the universe ever reverses, entropy will (very very slowly) start decreasing.

I mean right now it doesn't look like that's likely to happen (I mean the expansion isn't just continuing -- its getting faster.)

But given that we have absolutely no idea what drives said expansion, we can't be completely sure that it won't stop or even reverse in the future. Or hell, even "jump" again like it did during inflation.. and if that happens.. would it jump in or out?

All we've got to work with is an extrapolation from what we've seen -- which obviously only includes the past, and not even all of that!) But without gaining some knowledge of how the underlying systems work, there's no reason to really believe that our extrapolations will bear out over the time scales of potentially hundreds of billions of years.

We named the underlying system "dark energy" -- a term means "we know it exists but basically nothing else about it.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[execthis]

Clearly it would be possible to sense heat. To the people who are trying to piss on my statement by saying that electromagnetic radation (in some form) could still be detected are missing the point entirely. Its not about electromagnet radiation, but just a metaphor that what a being is determines what it senses in a radical way.

That said, I really wonder though if, even if a being were to be able to sense heat, it would have any idea that stars exist, much less ever arrive at concepts like supernovae and black holes.

People will belabor the point in a kind of stubborn way, but then the whole idea of the reflection is already lost.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[onepoint]

Thank You.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[execthis]

I'm sorry that my example of not having eyes was not good. What if it was not simply of having eyes, but rather of not having any attribute which was affected by electromagnetism?

I'm sorry to those who replied previously but this is more what I meant. Its kind of like the idea of being a three-dimensional being in a four-dimensional world, only in my example it is not about dimensions, it could be about entire properties or aspects of the world which a being simply does not have extension into, hence would have no way of being aware of it except perhaps in only the most indirect way through some possible bleedover or leak-over effect.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[execthis]

What if a being's physical makeup did not include "extension" into whatever aspect of reality is effected, acted upon, or otherwise capable being perceived by such property of the universe? Perhaps such a being could, indirectly be affected, acted upon, or capable of perceiving, indirectly, some other aspect of reality which was affected by the first aspect. But, not being able to experience or be affected by this aspect, it simply has no concept whatsoever of something which, were it able to be perceived or experienced, would be incredibly obvious as an indelible, integral part of existence?
The simplest example I could think of was light, but this was not the best example I guess as the responses have proved.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[onepoint]

besides the thank you ... ( which I did as a separate item )
here is an observation that might help ...
odd but interesting ...

rainy days people pick up the phone more, over 1000 calls made to location where it was raining and way over 3000 phone calls where it was sunny, of those 4000 calls 100 picked up in the rain, and only 60 picked up in sunny.

I've now been testing this out for positive or negative experience ( I'm a realtor by trade, so cold calling is important when I place a new property on the market and want to tell everyone ) . the goal is to figure out if more people will show up on an open house if I call while it's type raining day or sunny day. not enough data yet to confirm if it matters

I have no clue how to test this with text messages, but the results should be interesting when focused on the under 40 age group.

so if you want to get a hold of someone for an important conversation, call while it's raining at the destination.

another weird and wonderful idea: I am trying to learn how to create a small ( tiny as in cigarette pack size ) weather station, that can give me Barometric Pressure, Luminous intensity, wind direction+speed, temp, humidity and ( most important ) transmit it twitter every 10 seconds. trying make this all into a kit costing $50 to $60 ( I got it down to $293 and 10" x 10" x 18") to give away to high schools, What I think is the fun part, when there is 200 data location transmitting ( all locally ), and the data posted publicly in twitter with a known location, we could discover how a tornado forms or what to look out for. with 25000 high schools in the USA, I bet a lot of data could be produced that someone could use and find out cool stuff.

ok and this is so weird that it could be considered crazy:
say no to wind energy, because the velocity of the wind entering the blades does not equal the same when it exits. so over the long term, wind is not reaching the normal destination at the same speed or coolness. just thinking so way out that it could be right.

and I don't kneed someone to slob my knob, just share an idea, weird and fun, we all get a chance to make a positive change to the world

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[Altrag]

Our physical makeup doesn't include an "extension" into the weak or strong nuclear forces -- at least not such that we'd recognize them using only our senses -- but we still have pretty solid theories on them which were discovered because the theories we already had (primarily QED at the time) simply weren't sufficient as we learned how to probe deeper and deeper into reality.

Or dark matter. We know there's something wrong with our physics because things don't line up. The exact same scenario Maxwell and his contemporaries saw when they were starting to realize that electricity and magnetism were different aspects of the same underlying force. The same scenario as when Einstein realized that Newton's gravity was wrong in just that teensy tiny way.

Sooner or later we'll figure out whether DM is a real thing and perhaps even learn some of its properties, or we'll figure out what's wrong with our equations and fix them. Either way though, these historical scenarios exemplify ways that science can probe things that our senses can't pick up and manage to come up with useful theories as to how they work.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[execthis]

Our physical makeup doesn't include an "extension" into the weak or strong nuclear forces...

Yes it very much does.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[tsa]

Just look at dolphins. They suffer the unfortunate fate of having no hands and living in the water. Despite their enormous brains they haven't come far in understanding the universe and using that knowledge to their advantage.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[X0563511]

I think eventually, yes. Just as we are not able to sense the vast majority of EM radiation, we mapped the spectrum and can sense most of it - and all we started with was detection of radiative heat and visual light.

I do think it would have taken much longer to arrive at the understandings we currently hold, but I don't think being able to see visible light was critical to arrive where we are. We would come up with ways to communicate and think about information with the senses we had.

Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[strikethree]

But really think about it, and now think that there could be things in the Universe just like light which we simply do not have organs to perceive. How can we understand it?

Every thing that exists leaves some sort of trace or has some sort of effect on something else.

Take light for example: Without eyes, we would still know that it exists.

Yes.

Why? Because when the photons impact atoms, it can be released as heat. We would discover the heat and ask why it was there. We would eventually discover light even without eyes.

Would we understand light in the same way as we understand it now if we had no eyes? Maybe not... but maybe our eyes limit our understanding of light in ways that a being with no eyes would not experience.

We could always ask someone who was born blind...

Medium.com

[narcc]

Again. It's like a plague.

Re:Medium.com

[93 Escort Wagon]

Slashdot really needs to tag all story links with the destination domain, just like they already do in the comments.

Re:Medium.com

[Black Parrot]

I reckon Tesla and Bitcoin haven't been keeping up with their payola.

Re:Medium.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Get rid of this clickbait or change the slogan:

"Slashdot, News for nerds, stuff from medium.com"

Re:Medium.com

[gargleblast]

Actually, the mere existence of medium.com is evidence that the limit in question has already been reached.

Re:Medium.com

[TWX]

That's what happens when you try to surf the web on a Motorola StarTAC...

Intellectual Exercises

[mbone]

These speculations are useful intellectual exercises, but should not be taken very seriously. Intelligent life may or may not last for 10^100 years, but the chances of any detailed theory of the long term future of the universe surviving 100 years is basically nil, and even 10 years is no sure thing.

For myself, I'd bet on a "big rip", except that I don't know how to collect on such a bet.

Re:Intellectual Exercises

[Kjella]

These speculations are useful intellectual exercises, but should not be taken very seriously. Intelligent life may or may not last for 10^100 years, but the chances of any detailed theory of the long term future of the universe surviving 100 years is basically nil, and even 10 years is no sure thing.

The details may be a bit fuzzy, but entropy makes forever seem impossible and it doesn't rely on any particular macro model. The one exception is the Big Bang, which created a ridiculous amount of energy in a point source. It doesn't matter if we invent fission/fusion/anti-matter/warp drive to colonize the universe or Dyson's spheres to harness the power of entire stars, eventually all the stars run out of fuel and we die even if we've figured out how to rejuvenate and live "forever". Or we'll discover some freaky quantum effect that makes energy seep into our universe tomorrow, leaving us with an infinite power source. Or in a million years. It's not exactly an immediate concern and mostly belongs in a philosophy class, if everything will end does anything have a meaning.

Re:Intellectual Exercises

[KGIII]

You are thinking the wrong way. Bet the other way. I will bet you my house, land, and money against just your house that the Big Rip does not happen within ten years. If it does happen you can have all my stuff. If it does not then I get your house.

Re:Intellectual Exercises

[david_thornley]

In the last fifty years I've been following this stuff, I can remember several ideas. I may have been reading outdated books, but I remember arguments for the steady state Universe when I started hitting that section of the library. There was speculation on the "bang-bang-bang" theory, in which the Universe would end by collapsing back into a proto-Big Bang. The heat death of the Universe has been a popular theory for a long time, although the exact nature of the entropic Universe has varied, including cold stars drifting through space as well as the disintegration of everything into very large electron-positron pairs. The Big Rip seems to have come later.

So, if we don't count steady state, I've read of these distinct ends: the collapse of the Universe, heat death with distinct objects, heat death without solid matter, and the catastrophic expansion of local space. mbone is right.

God exists outside these limits

[Anonymous Coward]

He manages the whole thing.

Re:God exists outside these limits

[Alain Williams]

Evidence please.

The last question

[Mats Svensson]

I asked The Siri about that, and it said: -I dont know what you mean by : How ban the not account couch entropy of he universe beer ass lively deceased?"

Re:The last question

[93 Escort Wagon]

Sounds like Siri's been drinking.

Re:The last question

[Anonymous Coward]

+googol

for the unread:
The Last Question - Isaac Asimov
http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

Re:The last question

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer the last answer

"He threw the switch connecting all the galaxies computing power, and asked the question: " Is there a god""
From the speaker he heard the reply "Now there is"

Re:The Last Question

[Bing Tsher E]

Are the points redeemable for anything?

Re: The last question

[TWX]

Regardless of how it came to be a part of Buddhist teaching, it still offers a contradiction to be pointed out and further helps to demonstrate how religions are social-evolutionary processes. Which is why fights between religions or subsets of religions are so damn funny at times.

Re:The last question

[Trax3001BBS]

I prefer the last answer

"He threw the switch connecting all the galaxies computing power, and asked the question: " Is there a god""
From the speaker he heard the reply "Now there is"

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov © 1956 http://www.multivax.com/last_q...

Re: The last question

[Anonymous Coward]

That's my point: it's not part of Buddhist teaching. It's part of the cultural background knowledge existent before Buddhist teaching. Buddha was all about the here and now on earth. His teaching overlays what people already belived about the afterlife, but he didn't concern his teachings with that. The two got intermingled over time on a culture by culture basis, it so happens that most of the cultures who embraced Buddhism also had a preexisting belief in reincarnation.

Re: The last question

[KGIII]

I have had my papers in to make a return trip to Nepal and go on refuge. I am afraid that I will be denied this time due to the earthquake. I may go to India or even Australia instead. I plan on taking my Sarma as they have only been to Nepal when they were much younger so that may be part of the hold up but it seems unlikely.

Re: The last question

[KGIII]

In a scientific term, our atoms may be used in new life and information can not be destroyed. Is that reincarnation? I am not an authority nor should you listen to an authority. Think it through on your own or seek more answers. The great thing about Buddhism is it fits anything - I am, in fact, an atheist. I am also a Buddhist. The two reconcile nicely even in the Tibetan Buddhism realm.

Re:The last question

[jfdavis668]

And AC said: "LET THERE BE LIGHT!" And there was light

Re:The last question

[david_thornley]

IIRC, The Last Question ended with Universal AC saying "Let there be light", and not mentioning God. The "Now there is" was from a Frederic Brown story of about the same age.

Re:The last question

[Trax3001BBS]

IIRC, The Last Question ended with Universal AC saying "Let there be light", and not mentioning God. The "Now there is" was from a Frederic Brown story of about the same age.

I was sure of the same thing but posted what I found (I mean who would change a copyrighted story on the Internet), I think "let there be light" was a much better ending.

Did the Frederic Brown story end "there is now" (a god) ? if so I've read it as well.

In our universe yes, but..

[LongearedBat]

...with the help of MultiVAX intelligence will... (Won't spoil it for those who haven't read it yet.)

Re:In our universe yes, but..

[shess]

Story in comic form:
      http://bato.to/read/_/188371/t...

Big Rip

[Tablizer]

I thought the top current working theory is that the expansion of space will eventually cause the Big Rip in roughly 25 Billion years from now. A slow "heat death" would be a step up from that.

Why not Just Link Textbook Chapters?

[Roger W Moore]

Rather than poorly written, mistake filled blog pages on basic physics why not just link chapters from a physics textbook? The content is the same, there would be fewer mistakes in the physics since books are reviewed and edited and the writing style is less annoying.

The blogger this time forgets to include the knowledge that the universe's expansion is accelerating. We learnt this about a decade ago so it's not exactly new. The problem is that as the rate of expansion increases the volume of the universe which you can travel to without exceeding the speed of light shrinks. Given enough time it will become smaller than atoms and then nuclei etc. until you get to the planck scale and then nobody knows what will happen since we need a working quantum model for space-time itself which does not yet exist.

Now whether heat death or the 'big rip' kills off intelligence first is probably not clear - and I'm not sure I would really believe anyone who claims to know given the unknowns. However since space-time itself has a limited lifespan then intelligence clearly has a limited lifespan too unless we eventually figure out a way to leave the universe. That might be a tricky problem but we do have a lot of time to try and figure out a solution

Re:Why not Just Link Textbook Chapters?

[thegarbz]

But then how would StartsWithABang put food on the table? His blog clearly can't survive with every single post being reblogged on slashdot. We should be clicking on medium links for his greater good.

Re:Why not Just Link Textbook Chapters?

[Roger W Moore]

Before the Big Bang there was no space and it is debatable whether there was any time either. So if all space and (perhaps) time can be created from nothing why do you have a problem with the reverse happening at some point?

It's Wrong

[TheTrueScotsman]

Because quantum mechanics.

If we end up in eternal de Sitter space (looks likely), then we can look forward to existing as an infinite sequence of Boltzmann Brains.

That's a great picture of Freeman Dyson.

Re:It's Wrong

[Prune]

Poincaré recurrence probably applies to our universe**, so the sequence of Boltzmann brains is not going to be infinite. On a more subjective note, I think that (at least the perception of) continuity is a central aspect of conscious existence, so Boltzmann brains highly dispersed throughout eternity lacks appeal.

**See chosen answer at http://physics.stackexchange.c...

Re:It's Wrong

[TheTrueScotsman]

Poincaré recurrence probably applies to our universe**, so the sequence of Boltzmann brains

I don't buy that. Surely the horizon in de Sitter space is eternally expanding, so the entropy on the horizon's surface is always increasing. We can walk through an expanding phase space without needing to recur.

Re:It's Wrong

[Prune]

Wrong, the horizon is not eternally expanding! As you asymptotically approach de Sitter space, the horizon becomes purely a function of the cosmological constant (because it's a function of the curvature, which is determined by the cosmological constant in de Sitter space). You can see the equation, and some even tighter bounds in http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/00...

Getting stupider every article

[Anonymous Coward]

and the stupider, the more often the articles. The obvious conclusion is obvious.

Clickbait

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really just one notch above the "You won't believe what happens next when a single Mom discovers this one weird trick to lose a bit of belly fat!" clickbait. The theory of heat death of the universe isn't even remotely recent news (unless you're living in the mid 1800's).

Re:Clickbait

[Gavagai80]

I see it more as a simplistic children's picture book introduction to cosmology. It's good for that.

How do we really know?

[Idou]

Eventually, it all must end

How do we really know, until we give it a try?

Sounds like

[Vinegar Joe]

The opening to a Firesign Theater album.

An open letter to SWABB

[WinstonWolfIT]

Bennett and timothy are sugar-posters compared to you. Would you please in all sincerity fuck the fuck fucking OFF. Or die in a fire. Your shit-posts are an insult to any shred of intelligence in this finite universe.

Mod parent down

[Prune]

Rather than poorly written, mistake filled blog pages on basic physics why not just link chapters from a physics textbook? The content is the same, there would be fewer mistakes in the physics since books are reviewed and edited and the writing style is less annoying. The blogger this time forgets to include the knowledge that the universe's expansion is accelerating. We learnt this about a decade ago so it's not exactly new. The problem is that as the rate of expansion increases the volume of the universe which you can travel to without exceeding the speed of light shrinks. Given enough time it will become smaller than atoms and then nuclei etc. until you get to the planck scale and then nobody knows what will happen since we need a working quantum model for space-time itself which does not yet exist. Now whether heat death or the 'big rip' kills off intelligence first is probably not clear - and I'm not sure I would really believe anyone who claims to know given the unknowns. However since space-time itself has a limited lifespan then intelligence clearly has a limited lifespan too unless we eventually figure out a way to leave the universe. That might be a tricky problem but we do have a lot of time to try and figure out a solution

the universe's expansion is accelerating...The problem is that as the rate of expansion increases the volume of the universe which you can travel to without exceeding the speed of light shrinks.

Correct.

Given enough time it will become smaller than atoms and then nuclei etc. until you get to the planck scale and then nobody knows what will happen since we need a working quantum model for space-time itself which does not yet exist. Now whether heat death or the 'big rip'

You jumped the gun!

The 'big rip' is a very specific model of accelerating expansion, one where the rate of acceleration itself is increasing, and the rip occurs at a finite time in the future. That model relies on dark energy being not the cosmological constant, but something known as phantom energy. There is no evidence whatsoever that the accelerating expansion we're observing corresponds to a type that will lead to a big rip. The more likely scenario is that gravitationally bound concentrations of matter such as the local cluster of galaxies will remain so including at the timescales where black holes would have all evaporated, baryons would have decayed, and quantum tunneling would have smeared out the structure of matter. In this case, the real issue becomes growing entropy within the Hubble volume.

The point your post should have made is that the solution proposed by Freeman Dyson and discussed in TFA — that of slowing down life/thinking processes at a rate slightly higher than the loss of available energy differential usable for driving these life/thinking processes — has two fatal flaws, which were pointed out almost immediately after Dyson came out with his proposal (but TFA, sadly, omits).

The first one is that, as time tends to infinity, the probability tends to certainty that a quantum fluctuation will cause any possible timing mechanism used to control the life/thinking processes to fail. Eventually, the expected tick will never come, and that will be it.

The second one is something much more severe than just failing to allow for life/intelligence to exist indefinitely. Since our Hubble volume will contain finite amount of matter-energy forever, the Bekenstein bound applies and thus the Hubble volume can only contain a finite number of distinguishable quantum states. After some point, all possible thoughts in that Hubble volume would have been thought, and any new ones will be repeats of ones that previously occurred. Even if you could be alive in this situation, would you want to?

PS I do agree that this blog is overrepresented on /., by a wide margin.

Re:Mod parent down

[Prune]

So much for proof-reading. I didn't intend to quote the full post, just the subsequent selections.

Re:Mod parent down

[t_ban]

Since our Hubble volume will contain finite amount of matter-energy forever, the Bekenstein bound applies and thus the Hubble volume can only contain a finite number of distinguishable quantum states. After some point, all possible thoughts in that Hubble volume would have been thought, and any new ones will be repeats of ones that previously occurred. Even if you could be alive in this situation, would you want to?

Thanks for the interesting post. It reminds me about Nietzsche's theory of eternal recurrence. But here is what the philosopher Georg Simmel had to say on this matter (as summarised by Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufman):

Even if there were exceedingly few things in a finite space in an infinite time, they would not have to repeat in the same configurations. Suppose there were three wheels of equal size, rotating on the same axis, one point marked on the circumference of each wheel, and these three points lined up in one straight line. If the second wheel rotated twice as fast as the first, and if the speed of the third wheel was 1/pi of the speed of the first, the initial line-up would never recur.

Please read the Wikipedia page on "eternal return" and cyclic concepts of time; you'll find it interesting.

Bennett Haselton

[thegarbz]

For a while I really missed Bennett Haselton's insightful and regular commentary. But I think we have finally found his reincarnation.

The prodigal son returns. Bask in his greatness and bow before him just as all slashdot editors have.

Re:Bennett Haselton

[weilawei]

I'll take this over Bennett any day. At least I don't have to scroll very far to get to the shit talking.

Pink Floyd said it best.

[mark_reh]

There'll be war, there'll be peace.
But everything one day will cease.
All the iron turned to rust;
All the proud men turned to dust.
And so all things, time will mend.
So this song will end

Re:Pink Floyd said it best.

[Prune]

I was so disturbed by having ended up rummaging through yet another medium.com slashvertisement thread that I wondered about the provenance of these lyrics and searched for them, without noticing the title of your post until just now, after I've been listening to the album online for the past ten minutes.

nihilist arbys

[bitrex]

Put my corpse in a canoe. push it through the drive thru as a lit arrow sets my rotting flesh aflame. Curse the godless sky. Bury me at Arbys

There is a limit

[Trogre]

and apparently we've already passed it...

What about that theory...

[wonkey_monkey]

...that says there might be a way to do an infinite amount of computation in a finite time?

No, I don't remember the details. No, IANAP. But I'm sure it was a thing, once.

I've always wondered...

[Thluks]

We seem to be a force that creates order in the universe, not chaos/entropy. What if we get powerful enough to do that on the scale of stars and black holes? If we could thrawl space for dissipated matter and energy and thus create new stars, wouldn't the stop the heat death?

Re:I've always wondered...

[ultranova]

If we could thrawl space for dissipated matter and energy and thus create new stars, wouldn't the stop the heat death?

That particular method won't work, since stars "burn" fuel and eventually all will be gone. However, combining general relativity with quantum physics might allow us to control the shape of spacetime in a way that basically amounts to creating new "baby" universes.

Alternatively, an expanding universe can not actually experience heat death, since the expansion itself causes the ambient temperature to fall. However, taking advantage of this fact would require giving up anything resembling our current fleshy forms. Of course, we'll probably end up doing that anyway, since mind uploading has obvious advantages once we leave the only known environment - Earth - where our bodies are actually convenient. And of course, it might turn out mind uploading is actually impossible, in which case we have problems.

And of course, it's always possible that the Laws of Thermodynamics are not, in fact, absolute, or more likely, don't mean what we think they mean. It wouldn't be the first time people jumped to conclusions without thinking of all the implications.

Re:I've always wondered...

[david_thornley]

We often create local order, but this requires increasing entropy elsewhere. I am creating these meaningful patterns of 1s and 0s by converting a bowl of Raisin Bran to something a lot less ordered.

+1

[Prune]

Wow, a post that actually deserves to be moderated Funny.

Re:+1

[bitrex]

I'm not the original author, but it seemed appropriate. There's much more where that came from: https://twitter.com/nihilist_a...

There's a Russian song about the finite limit on

[FilatovEV]

the existence of intelligence due to the heat death of the Univesre.

Namely, "Inevitability" by a band "Complex Numbers":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Badly written

[AndyCanfield]

This is a very dumb article. First off, just because he argues that the livespan of intelligence is not infinite, it is finite, as if he knew the number. Second, his basic argument is that entropy reduces the differenctial between the energy levels of point A and point B. Sure it dies. And the amount of energy differential approchases zero. BUT IT NEVER GETS TO ZERO. And the level of energy differenctial needed to support intelligence will probably 'approach' zero also, but never get to zero. Even today artificial intelligence requires a tiny fraction of the energy (differential) that it needed five decades ago.

This guy must be assuming also that Physics will stop dead; that nothing will ever be discovered. What about alternate universes? How's your predictor function there?

No thanks; not well done.

Re:Badly written

[Altrag]

> is not infinite, it is finite
Yes, that's basically definition.

> as if he knew the number
Why would he have to know the number? I can tell you that your lifespan is finite, but I can't tell you the exact second you will die. Knowing that its finite doesn't require knowing exactly what finite number it will come to.

> IT NEVER GETS TO ZERO
Irrelevant, because we're interested in usable energy. If the energy differential is at its minimum (non-zero) value and you try to extract exactly that much energy, you'll find that something will prevent you (most likely in terms of the device needed to extract that energy will itself take more energy than you can extract.) Because as you said, it never gets to zero -- including the fact that we can't force it to zero. So while you may be right in that the absolute energy differential will never be zero, the extractable energy can be.

> assuming also that Physics will stop dead
What? Do you expect them to look into the future and write an article based on the physics we might know in 100 years? 1000? 1,000,000? Its kind of by necessity that the author only use physics that we actually know about.

Or perhaps you expect him to base his article on branes or multiple universes or other shit that have absolutely zero evidence beyond "we can make some math work out if we try"? That seems even more bogus than extrapolating today's knowledge of physics into the future.

What if the time stops?

[twms2h]

If there is no more change in entropy, there won't be any time. Is that then infinite?

Re:What if the time stops?

[Altrag]

There will still be time. Figuring out how to measure it without any entropy is another question (perhaps you could measure the rate of expansion of the universe. Assuming its accelerating at a fairly consistent rate, measuring that rate at any particular point would give you a measure of the amount of time passed since your last measurement. Of course then you have the question of how you could figure out whether the rate of acceleration has changed.)

You could also perhaps measure the rate of zero-point particle production (which wouldn't stop)? Not sure if that's consistent enough to act as a clock. I do know that you'd need to measure it over an enormous amount of space in order to have any sort of accuracy, even if its theoretically plausible.

Both measurement methods of course would require a device.. which you wouldn't have since you can't build useful devices without entropy. But we're all talking about "in principle" anyway since I doubt we'll be around long enough to test these things in practice!

In any case, as far as current physics can tell it would be "infinite" either way. We of course can't predict 10^100 years into the future with any great accuracy (another inflation period hits? Or a deflation period? Or maybe expansion energy has a finite maximum and just stops when that runs out? Who knows.) But if there are no surprises with respect to how the universe continues to expand, then it will certainly (not) end with an infinite amount of time where any intelligence that somehow exists will be bored as hell.

Re:Medium.com again?

[RDW]

There's nothing special about our universe

Not easily impressed, are you?

We wretch idiots miss textbooks?

[ale2011]

But then how would StartsWithABang put food on the table? His blog clearly can't survive with every single post being reblogged on slashdot.

Why not? It is enough to keep each post below the pace that energy decreases by.

I'm not clear whether unnecessary thoughts consume the same amount of energy as necessary ones. As new as Dyson's statements are, I'm still missing a good textbook modeling how Sun's radiation created intelligence on Earth, assuming the Solar system is fairly closed —no, wait, maybe this?

we don't understand the universe yet, so don't...

[mix_left_and_right]

we don't understand the universe yet, so you should not assume that we cannot live forever, because if you assume that we cannot live forever, then you are making a decision that could end your life prematurely. You see, I am a cryonicist, and I assume that it is possible I can live forever. If I assume right now that I cannot live forever, I may make some decision that forecloses immortality. We do not really understand the universe yet. It may be possible to live forever. Yeah, yeah, I understand thermodynamics (former nuclear reactor operator here), but the universe may have some surprises in store for us.

Part hardy!

[AndyKron]

Party like there's no tomorrow!

Is there any way to reverse entropy?

[lunchlady55]

Insufficient data for meaningful answer.

http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

Re:Is there any way to reverse entropy?

[Xyrus]

At the very end, all that will remain is a sign floating innocuously through space as a lonely reminder that yes, once intelligent life flourished here. The sign will read:

Burma Shave

Re:Is there any way to reverse entropy?

[skovnymfe]

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Asimov

[rossdee]

Theres a short story by Isaac Asimov

The Last Question

Re:Asimov

[weilawei]

Make sure to also read The Last Answer, as well.

The Last Question

[msk]

Can entropy be reversed?

No points for you if you don't get the reference.

RANDOM HEAT FLUCTUATIONS INDEFINITELY...

[mix_left_and_right]

there will be random aggregations of heat and matter that spontaneously and randomly appear in the universe...so the universe will never ever be completely homogeneous and without heat....also intelligent lifeforms such as future mankind and eternally decrease the amount of energy needed for life and thus continue to live until one of these randomly created aggregations of heat and matter appears...then that energy source can provide energy and life...finally another universe will be created through these randomly appearing fluctuations in the space time fabric.

Breaking news!

[GrumpySteen]

A theory that's been around since the 1800s is still around!

It is topics like this...

[pigiron]

and the entirely asinine "singularity" comments that are the reason I don't read /. much anymore.

Re:It is topics like this...

[pigiron]

Machines have yet to "make themselves" do anything whatsoever.

I have nothing to back it up, but...

[cahuenga]

Every species becomes extinct, eventually. Human arrogance doesn't want to hear it, but rest assured, some day it will all end.

off tipic : Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[onepoint]

I rather like what you said, so with that said.
I would like to know ( I don't know so I like to ask )
will gravity end at the " expected end of the universes life " ?

I mean tons of dead stars ( based on what I'm reading )
just push them together at the last 30 billion years or so
and restart the universe,

I'm guessing that if we lived that long, we should have
figured out how to push stars. but if gravity ends, then
i guess it won't work.

Re:off tipic : Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[Altrag]

Well gravity won't "end" as such, but assuming the expansion of the universe continues accelerating, we will eventually be in a state where individual atoms are being pushed apart by expansion faster than gravity can pull them back together.

The same argument will apply to the EM force eventually (breaking molecules apart into individual atoms and then ions.)

And finally to the strong force, though I'm not sure exactly how that one will work since quark binding works different from EM binding -- in particular, pulling two quarks apart generally produces new particles which, if I'm thinking correctly (and I may not be, I'm an armchair physicist at best..) would end up converting expansion energy into particle showers, which would in turn have some strange effects:

First, the universe would be "filling up" with new stuff as the conversion goes on, and

Second, if the expansion energy is conserved at all like normal energy is, this continual particle production should eventually stop the acceleration of expansion. Though it wouldn't stop expansion itself -- it would have to come to an equilibrium where the universe is expanding exactly fast enough to match the energy consumption of the particle production, which would still be orders of magnitude beyond ions recombining into atoms never mind gravitationally binding large objects like stars again.

Re:off tipic : Re:Quothe the raven, "Forevermore".

[onepoint]

thank you

This is news?

[johnnys]

If this is "news" shouldn't it be new? I saw Freeman Dyson give this talk in 1979.

Re:This is news?

[coldsalmon]

Exactly; there's nothing here that's not in the Wikipedia page "Ultimate fate of the universe." It's not even entertainingly or uniquely presented.

Wait....

[Rick Zeman]

...I thought with Facebook we were already past the point of intelligence existing!

As opposed to what?

[microcars]

an Infinite Limit?

Just remember ...

[Rambo Tribble]

... to turn out the lights.

Conjecture

[Roger W Moore]

baryons would have decayed

Actually that is conjecture as there is currently no evidence that protons decay. I'll grant that the expectation is that there are high energy processes which violate baryon number and if this is true then it should be possible for a proton to decay. However there is a simple way around this: suppose the initial conditions of the Big Bang just included a slight excess of baryons? No B violation is needed and protons are absolutely stable.

As you can probably guess I'm a particle physicist and not a cosmologist. However even in the dark energy models presumably a 'big rip' condition is reached in the voids between gravitationally bound objects since there is nothing to stop the acceleration? If so then surely the implications for the stable pockets is not really known since all our understanding of causal disconnection is based on GR which would no longer be valid in the regions between the galaxies.

Re:Conjecture

[Prune]

Proton decay is a really minor point, because it doesn't affect any of the more fundamental barriers (tunneling, quantum fluctuations, the Bekenstein bound). If all baryons decayed, and that was the only problem, life could potentially still exist in some other form, until larger timescales when the other problems take over.

By the way, even if protons don't decay in the usual manner, there are alternate ways in which protons might eventually be destroyed, involving virtual black holes and other processes. A number of these are noted in section "IV.F. Higher order proton decay" in http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/...

Eventually, it all must end.

[koan]

That's why I'm a fan of the Big Crunch, I see the Universe as being cyclical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

What does GOD need with a star ship?

[ChadSmith4920]

GOD is infinite.

Time is relative

[retroworks]

The perception of time negates the concept of "end". If I were sufficiently intelligent to read every word of a novel in one instant, the way I can recognize letters as a word, the novel would still be the same length as if I had to read it a word at a time.

Intelligence.

[MrL0G1C]

So, this intelligence thing, when does it start?

"Five Ages of the Universe" physics book

[peter303]

This 1990s book comes to a similar conclusion, but illustrates it with how life and intelligence might work. Baryons decay after 10^40 years. Black holes of every size evaporate by 10^100 years. There would be a near absolute sea of leptons remaining in the universe, some that might form positronium atoms the size of a current galaxy. A single bit of computation might take eons to effect in this scenario. (There may be a revision for new physics since the 1990s say the authors.)

Is intelligence able to spread to a new universe?

[dsmatthews9379]

Assuming there is a multi-verse and that there are newer universes formed all the time can intelligence grow large enough in time to know how to influence the formation of a new universe such that it can host an intelligence and spawn itself into the new universe?

Can a single or set of universal constants both be both functional (contribute to/define a universe of a form that can host intelligence) and somehow encode for that intelligence in the form of an AI running on a universal Turing machine? Are the digit sequences in some constants really random, and or can they also encode information? Are universes just huge rewrite decoding systems and the appropriate starting conditions will ensure the formation of an intelligence?

Can intelligence survive long enough in this universe to answer the above questions? Is immortality then theoretically possible if we upload ourselves into an AI and that AI learns to play God with new universes? Can man make a God in his own image (yes the reversal of the term is deliberate)? How can we be sure this has not already happened?

I just thought I'd ask since some of you seem to be in an omphaloskeptic mood today.