In billions of years, the universe will cease to exist. But the good news is that we have plenty of time to prepare for this and perhaps even figure out how to cheat cosmic death. Here are some possible ways our descendants might survive the cosmological apocalypse. And if you are there in the future, reading this, do not thank.
The universe, like the organisms that inhabit it, is a mortal entity. Born in the Big Bang, she will one day meet her fate in a similar cataclysm, whether it be the Big Squeeze or the Big Rebound, or the classic heat death, eternal and deep coldness. In any case, life will be doomed.
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Unless, of course, our talented descendants find a way to circumvent the limitations of space - or, more precisely, change the rules of the cosmological game.
In the basement of the universe
Our great-great-grandchildren, in the distant future, can leave our current Universe by migrating to a natural or artificially created "basement of the Universe". The civilization of the future could connect the new universe to the old with a wormhole and use it as living space, for computing - or an escape from the old, crumbling world.
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It may seem to you that I am talking nonsense and you become a free or involuntary participant, but this idea has been studied by serious scientists, including theoretical physicists who from time to time plunge into the theory of black holes and inflationary cosmology.
Perimeter Institute theoretical physicist Lee Smolin and Stanford string theorist Leonard Susskind believe that universes give rise to other universes through a natural evolutionary process known as cosmological natural selection (KEO). They admit that it was not by chance that space turned out to be ideal for the development and prosperity of intelligent life - our universe was formed in this way.
Smolin suggests that children's universes reproduce through black holes, and our universe is nothing more than just such a generator of black holes. The creation of children's universes with black holes is thus a "useful function" of the universe. Likewise, Susskind's theory plugs in black holes, but he adds the nature of "inflation," the force that causes the universe to expand rapidly at the start.
Given that universes can naturally spill out of black hole singularities, some theorists speculate that it is possible to create a universe of your own "in the basement." The process of artificially creating universes was first proposed by theoretical physicists Edward Fakhri and Alan Guth in 1987. Malcolm Brown described their proposal in the New York Times this way:
“Guth likens the universe in which we live to the two-dimensional surface of a sphere, which, due to its imposing size, seems to us almost perfectly flat. There are circumstances, he says, under which an "aneurysm" can develop on this surface, a region of space and time that swells like a tumor, gradually developing into a new universe."
To a hypothetical observer, conditions inside a tumor will resemble those of the Big Bang, from which our own universe appears to have grown. But to observers in our own universe, says Dr. Guth, this aneurysm will be like a black hole - a supermassive object whose powerful gravity even light cannot overcome. After a while, the black hole will evaporate, leaving no trace or hint of the place where the new universe was born.
Once the tumor separates from its home universe, the new universe will exist on a completely separate space-time continuum. Any communication between the two universes will be impossible.
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Black hole produces the universe
In their work Obstacle to the Creation of the Universe in the Laboratory, Guth and Fakhri shyly admit that it takes a tremendous amount of energy to get things done. As the authors write, "the need for an inherent singularity appears to be an insurmountable obstacle to creating an inflationary universe in the laboratory."
In an article in the NYT, Guth noted the following: “Such an achievement is obviously far beyond the capabilities of our technology, but some advanced civilizations in the distant future might… well, we will never know about that. We only know that our universe could have started in someone's basement."
In 2000, philosopher Nick Bostrom and cosmologist Milan Chirkovic outlined in a paper that an advanced civilization could not only use this type of universal engineering - but could also directly transfer information into its infant universe. This information could include the downloaded creature, thus presenting tantalizing possibilities for immortality.
Superiority
And if you don’t think that I’m going crazy, but start to believe me a little, it will not seem delusional to you that we could send our mind through a black hole - after downloading it to a computer.
Fifteen years ago, physicist Seth Lloyd stated that black holes are the densest and most efficient computing devices that could exist in our universe. His "final laptop" includes a kilogram of compressed matter, shrunken to the size of a completely insignificant black hole.
Thanks to Hawking radiation, this computing engine could run for only a fraction of a second (10 ^ -19 seconds, to be exact), but during that time it would perform 10 ^ 32 operations on 10 ^ 16 bits.
Armed with this idea and what Smolin and Susskind prophesied, futurologist and systems theorist John Smart thought of the possibility of the existence of rudimentary universes, artificial or natural, within the framework of the Fermi paradox - the question of why we have not yet met traces of extraterrestrial civilizations, which in space should be a dime a dozen.
He says it can be assumed that all evolved extraterrestrial life has abandoned its home universe in favor of something more interesting in the Great Za. Smart calls this the Superiority Hypothesis.
“The more we study the history of the Universe, the more it looks like every major transition, from galaxies to planets with life, eukaryotes, prokaryotes, people, cities, and now to intelligent computers, occurs in a process I call STEM compression. information production , - told Smart resource io9.
By "STEM compression" Smart means a process during which in each new system there are almost always simultaneously denser and more efficient users of space (S), time (T), energy (E) and matter (M). This, in turn, leads to the fact that information, complexity and intelligence are developing at an accelerated pace.
Over time, we pack more and more things into smaller spaces, while also making better use of information. As a result, the intellect always strives for inner space, which is always of two types: physical inner space and virtual inner space.
“Our destiny is density and dematerialization,” says Smart.
All of this brings us back to the question of our long-term prospects for survival. It is highly likely that our distant descendants will exist as digital beings, condensation of loaded consciousness or products of completely new consciousnesses and types of consciousness. Smart is partly right: they will be dematerialized and "immortal", unlike biological beings.
And what about the future of human civilization itself?
“If our societies become denser and more information-rich,” says Smart, “and if their central stores of knowledge, if not physical bodies, become more and more like what physicists call computronium (the densest and most efficient computational matter) then the hypothesis of superiority can shape our future, and the question of what happens to information in black holes can be important for our long-term survival."
Thus, we could send virtual copies of ourselves through a black hole if the "information theory of black holes" is correct. The holographic principle also suggests how this might have happened. But Smart believes many questions remain.
“If all civilizations in the universe eventually go to black holes when our universe dies, will we be informational“seeds”or conscious entities in this process?” He is concerned that the digitized consciousness may end up as a useless chunk of data floating around in the cosmological ether forever.
“Black holes could be the densest carriers of information and a universal vehicle for intelligence,” Smart thinks seriously. - If so, where will you go by transport? To a multiple universe, where we will meet myriads of other civilizations and compare what we have learned? To another universe to restart our life cycle?"
Change the rules of the game
If our distant offspring do not find an "escape hatch", be it a black hole or a new universe, they may come across another, even more radical solution. Another option is to change the rules of the cosmological game - to change the very fabric of the universe. After all, intelligence may turn out to be the most powerful force in the universe.
The idea that intelligence is not an isolated or epiphenomenal aspect of the universe is far from new.
The Jesuit philosopher, theologian and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin believed that humanity is more than just the sum of its parts, and that something amazing awaits our species in the future. True, based on his Christian motives, Teilhard did not agree with the scientific classification of humans according to their physical characteristics, thereby displacing us into one small species in the general order of primates.
Teilhard observed that virtually all non-human animals exhibit an amazing ability to adapt to their surroundings, while humans have learned to make tools that are separate from themselves. With the creation of writing, libraries, and powerful communication tools, humanity has made giant leaps that have allowed it to overcome physical limitations.
Mankind, Teilhard believed, was in the process of becoming a single organism with a single nervous system, which increasingly strengthened its position on this planet. He took the concept of the biosphere a step further by formulating the concept of the "noosphere". Teilhard saw no reason why people could not go even further, inspiring the philosophers, futurists and scientists who followed him.
Indeed, the Earth has recently entered a new geological era, which has been dubbed the "Anthropocene". Scientists have finally recognized that human intelligence is itself a force of nature - changing the planet, both for the worse and for the better. In the future, there is no reason to doubt that intelligence will continue to influence the environment, be it a planet or an entire star cluster.
In The Age of Spiritual Machines, futurist Ray Kurzweil argues that the characteristics of the universe may not be fixed and that intelligence will ultimately pierce the universe and decide the fate of the cosmos. He's writing:
“So, will the universe end up in great contraction or endless expansion of dead stars, or some other way? In my opinion, the main problem is not the mass of the universe, the possible existence of anti-migration or the so-called Einstein's cosmological constant. Rather, the fate of the universe is a decision that will need to be made and approached wisely when the time is right.”
Intelligence, Kurzweil predicts, will eventually prove to be more powerful than any of the "impersonal" and great forces of the universe.
Selfish Biocosm
Comprehensive theorist James Gardner took this idea to the extreme, arguing that the life-friendly nature of the universe can be explained by the predictable outcome of natural processes, including life and mind.
According to his theory of the "selfish biocosm", "the development of life and even more ordered forms of intelligence is inevitably associated with physical birth, evolution and reproduction of the cosmos." In short, intelligence does not exist in the universe by accident; rather, it is a deliberate and purposeful force of nature.
A corollary to Gardner's theory is that intelligent life creates new universes and its own successors. We may or may not survive the destruction of the universe, says Gardner, but our offspring will live everywhere. He's writing:
“We and other living beings are part of an as yet undiscovered transgalactic community of life and intelligence, scattered across billions of galaxies and countless parsecs, which collectively fulfill a mission of truly cosmic significance.
Based on the vision of the biocosm, we share a common destiny with this community - we help shape the future of the universe and transform it from a collection of lifeless atoms into a huge transcendental mind."
Gardner's theory is interesting in that it applies a strong anthropic principle - the philosophical idea that the laws of the cosmos make life not only possible, but inevitable - in such a way that life itself becomes responsible for the presence of the universe itself.
Kurzweil and Gardner agree that advanced intelligence will spread through space and transform matter into a more usable form. But if Kurzweil admits that intelligence may not go beyond local galactic constraints, Gardner believes that one day intelligent life will find a way to branch out into "billions of galaxies."
Ever unfolding universe
The Fermi paradox may speak of something else entirely. Perhaps the so-called Great Filter has been launched, which excludes the advancement of intelligent life beyond a certain stage of development. And you could say that the laws of the universe, in their current state, actually prevent life from evolving into futuristic space powers capable of ruling the universe.
And yet, in billions of years, the cosmological situation may change. Just as our solar system was chaotic and completely uninhabitable billions of years ago, the universe can also become "safer" and more hospitable to the superintelligence in the distant future than it is today.
And as soon as this stage of development is reached, all restrictions that hinder the fulfillment of their long-term goals will be removed from superintelligent civilizations.
Unfortunately, the question will be fair: was it too early for our civilization to appear in the history of the Universe to take advantage of the opportunity to correct it?