19 replies to this topic

[Bruce Klein]

This is a FAQ Database Project Topic: The idea here is to answer some of the most common questions asked about immortality. All replies should be specific to the question asked. - Thanks for your help.


The possibility of living for thousands of years is hotly debated. Yet, in terms of pure physics, there is no fundamental reason why an intelligent life form could not survive thousands or even millions of years.

The picture gets a little hazy, however, when we start talking about billions of years. Lets say we dodge EMP pulses, solar flares, gravitational disturbances, and power outages - now we're alive in a year that has 9 zeros after it, what happens to the universe as it expands and gets colder? What happens to life once entropy plays out?

Answers Forthcoming..

[Bruce Klein]

I recently stumbled across this article concerning infinity and heat death. The Heat Death problem/argument seems to be one of the strongest against the possibility of immortality. Nice to see rational arguments for the pro side. -BJK


By: John Hartung Ph.D.

Cosmic heat death has been one of the abiding myths of our age. Bertrand Russell and others seized upon the seemingly inevitable degeneration of the universe as predicted by the second law of thermodynamics to support a philosophy of atheism, nihilism, and despair. Today we can paint a somewhat different picture. The universe may be running down, but it is not running out . . . In Dyson's scenario, the beings of the far future would impact less and less on a universe coldly indifferent to their requirements, but by clever organization, they could still think an infinite number of thoughts and experience an infinite number of experiences . . . [and] in fact, things may not even be as bad as Dyson's scenario. . . . our descendants may themselves attempt to modify the large-scale organization of the cosmos so as to preserve their longevity . . . by manipulating many stars, clusters of astronomical bodies could be created and managed for the benefit of the community. And because the effects amplify and accumulate, there is no limit to the size of systems that can be controlled in this way . . . As time goes on intelligent beings can gain more and more control over a less and less resourceful universe, until all of nature is essentially "technologized," and the distinction between what is natural and what is artificial disappears.

We can certainly imagine our descendants, with such a vast amount of time at their disposal, developing space exploration and all manner of marvelous technologies. They will have plenty of time to leave Earth before the sun grills it to a crisp . . . Our descendants could colonize the galaxy in a small fraction of the time that life on Earth took to evolve into a technological society

Article

[Bruce Klein]

This article was contributed by ImmInst.org Navigator 'Mind'. Thank you for your help. - BJK

Saving the universe
February 11 2003


At last NASA has some good news: the end of the cosmos is cancelled; life will not be wiped out in a "big crunch" when the universe collapses.

NASA is expected to announce this week that it has proved the existence of "dark energy", a cosmic force that counteracts gravity and will keep the universe expanding forever. The announcement will effectively demolish the theory that life will be wiped out in a "big crunch" when the universe collapses, and should end decades of academic dispute
--------------
Although NASA's discovery means the universe will go on forever, the same is not true for human life. As the universe expands, all the energy needed to keep the stars and galaxies alight will be used up. What will remain is a universe full of black holes, which after trillions of years will explode to leave nothing but dark energy.


http://www.smh.com.a...4725732451.html

[Bruce Klein]

ehh, not good..

Tantalising evidence hints Universe is finite
08 October 03 - 2003
New Scientist - by Hazel Muir

Perplexing observations beamed back by a NASA spacecraft are fuelling debates about a mystery of biblical proportions - is our Universe infinite? Scientists have announced tantalising hints that the Universe is actually relatively small, with a hall-of-mirrors illusion tricking us into thinking that space stretches on forever.

However, work by a second team seems to contradict this, and scientists are now busy trying to resolve the conundrum. "Whether space is finite is something people have been asking since ancient times, and probably before that," says mathematician Jeffrey Weeks from Canton, New York. "If we resolved this and confirmed that space is finite, this would be an enormous step forward in our understanding of nature."

At the centre of the debate are observations by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which was launched in 2001. The probe measures temperature ripples in the "cosmic microwave background", the afterglow radiation from the big bang fireball.

http://www.newscient...p?id=ns99994250

[Bruce Klein]

hah..

Cosmic Soccer Ball? Theory Already Takes Sharp Kicks
The New York Times By DENNIS OVERBYE

In an unusual logjam of contradictory claims, a revolutionary new model of the universe, as a soccer ball, arrives on astronomers' desks this morning at least slightly deflated.

In a paper being published today in the journal Nature, Dr. Jeffrey Weeks, an independent mathematician in Canton, N.Y., and his colleagues suggest, based on analysis of maps of the Big Bang, that space is a kind of 12-sided hall of mirrors, in which the illusion of infinity is created by looking out and seeing multiple copies of the same stars.

If the model is correct, Dr. Weeks said, it would rule out a popular theory of the Big Bang that asserts that our own observable universe is just a bubble among others in a realm of vastly larger extent. "It means we can just about see the whole universe now," Dr. Weeks said.

But other astronomers, including a group led by Dr. David Spergel of Princeton, said a continuing analysis of the same data had probably already ruled out the soccer ball universe. They promised to post their results soon on the physics Web site arXiv.org/list/astro-ph.

"Weeks and friends are making a dramatic claim, perhaps one of the biggest science stories of the century," said Dr. Neil Cornish, a physicist at Montana State University, "but extraordinary claims require extraordinary support."

For now, the two groups, who have been in intense communication the last few days, disagree on whether the soccer ball universe has been refuted. What is amazing about this debate, they all agree, is that it will actually be settled soon, underscoring the power of modern data to resolve issues that were once considered almost metaphysical.

"This is what got Giordano Bruno burned at the stake," said Dr. Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the University of Pennsylvania. "Is space infinite or not?"

In Nature, Dr. Weeks and his colleagues write: "Since antiquity, humans have wondered whether our universe is finite or infinite. Now, after more than two millennia of speculation, observational data might finally settle this ancient question." The other authors are Dr. Jean-Pierre Luminet of Paris Observatory; Dr. Alain Riazueleo of the French atomic energy center CEA, in Saclay, France; Dr. Roland Lehoucq of the Paris Observatory and CEA; and Dr. Jean-Phillippe Uzan of the University of Paris.

http://www.nytimes.c...print&position=

[Lazarus Long]

I suggest that this NY Times article is an example of an excellent one that will be lost as the link goes bad in two weeks. It should be posted in full and referenced from a number of locations like this thread:

I see the Light

and it overlaps the discussion we have been having on physics from a number of areas

Who is Peter Lynds?

Cosmic Mysteries to Ponder

New Clues To Nature Of Mysterious Dark Energy

as an example of only a few but also in researching this article I found a treasure trove of source information and here is one of the actual PDF articles that is available open source.

Constraining Topology of the Universe
http://www.arxiv.org...310/0310233.pdf

And the source site which is a great Astrophysics web source

New Articles
http://www.arxiv.org/list/astro-ph/new

Entry page
http://www.arXiv.org/list/astro-ph

[Mechanus]

I was planning to write more on this some time; in the mean time, some sources of information.

A Resource Letter on Physical Eschatology by Milan Cirkovic [lots of references and general information]

Time without end: physics and biology in an open universe by Freeman Dyson [moral: live forever on a finite amount of energy by hibernation]

Entropy in an Expanding Universe by Steven Frautschi [moral: we may have an infinite amount of free energy to live on, if maximum entropy goes to infinity]

The Fate of Life in the Universe by Lawrence Krauss and Glenn Starkman

Life, The Universe, and Nothing: Life and Death in an Ever-Expanding Universe by Lawrence Krauss and Glenn Starkman [moral: the cosmological constant pulls everything apart, then we die]

The Ultimate Fate of Life in an Accelerating Universe by Katherine Freese, William Kinney [moral: if there is some other form of dark energy, we might still live]

Phantom Energy and Cosmic Doomsday by Robert Caldwell, Marc Kamionkowski, Nevin Weinberg [big rip!]

Wormholes and ringholes in a dark energy universe by Pedro Gonzalez-Diaz [big rip might be survivable]

The warp drive: hyper-fast travel within general relativity by Miguel Alcubierre

A 'warp drive' with more reasonable total energy requirements by Chris van den Broeck

Parallel Universes by Max Tegmark

Eternal Inflation, black holes, and the future of civilizations by Garriga, Mukhanov, Olum, Vilenkin

Philosophical Implications of Inflationary Cosmology by Knobe, Olum, Vilenkin

Traversable wormholes: some implications by Michael Clive Price

Traversable wormholes with arbitrarily small energy condition violations by Matt Visser, Sayan Kar, Naresh Dadhich

Negative Energy, Wormholes and Warp Drive by Lawrence Ford, Thomas Roman

(there are lots of other articles on wormholes, warps and negative energy; these are probably not representative)

Existential Risks by Nick Bostrom

aleph.se/Trans on space-time engineering

aleph.se/Trans on megascale engineering

aleph.se/Trans on the omega point and life in the universe

Books:
"The Last Three Minutes" by Paul Davies
"The Physics of Immortality" by Frank Tipler

Short summary: it's unknown whether Heat Death is survivable (even in principle). Although it looks difficult, we'll have a lot of (mental) resources to throw at the problem if anything is still alive by then.

[Bruce Klein]

Thanks Mechanus,

This is the ultimate problem to solve for our Threats To Life Council - TTLC. I hope you find the time to write something for us.

[Lazarus Long]

Here is a PDF of the article that begins this return to the discussion. These finding don't just reflect on the issue of Heat Death they reflect on FTL (faster than light) travel and Multiverse theory. I was referencing it under I saw the light because I think the finding will be related to why Quantum Mechanical principle doesn't seem to be working with Planck's Constant at a Universal level. It is just a hunch but I think a convergence of data is showing that we are do for a major rethinking of principles we have been taking for granted.

Don't you just love to be alive at a time like this?

Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0307282
From: Angelica de Oliveira-Costa
Date (v1): Tue, 15 Jul 2003 19:44:25 GMT (272kb)
Date (revised v2): Thu, 9 Oct 2003 17:35:55 GMT (272kb)

The significance of the largest scale CMB fluctuations in WMAP
Authors: Angelica de Oliveira-Costa (Penn), Max Tegmark (Penn), Matias Zaldarriaga (Harvard), Andrew Hamilton (Colorado)

Comments: Sentence added pointing out that our results rule out the recently proposed dodecahedron model of Luminet, Weeks, Riazuelo, Lehoucq & Uzan. 12 pages, 5 figs; more info at this http URL

We investigate anomalies reported in the Cosmic Microwave Background maps from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite on very large angular scales and discuss possible interpretations. Three independent anomalies involve the quadrupole and octopole:

1. The cosmic quadrupole on its own is anomalous at the 1-in-20 level by being low (the cut-sky quadrupole measured by the WMAP team is more strikingly low, apparently due to a coincidence in the orientation of our Galaxy of no cosmological significance);

2. The cosmic octopole on its own is anomalous at the 1-in-20 level by being very planar;

3. The alignment between the quadrupole and octopole is anomalous at the 1-in-60 level.

Although the a priori chance of all three occurring is 1 in 24000, the multitude of alternative anomalies one could have looked for dilutes the significance of such a posteriori statistics. The simplest small universe model where the universe has toroidal topology with one small dimension of order half the horizon scale, in the direction towards Virgo, could explain the three items above. However, we rule this model out using two topological tests: the S-statistic and the matched circle test. In particular, our results rule out the recently proposed dodecahedron model of Luminet, Weeks, Riazuelo, Lehoucq & Uzan.

Full Text PDF
http://arxiv.org/PS_...307/0307282.pdf

[gea1980]

Today I found this website and it has made me unseemingly happy. I have been thinking on these topics for a few years now and it is extraordinary to find a place where people are of a like mind, though I wonder why I hadn't found this website before. This is however irrelevant, what I have yet to find even in this website, though it may be due to my not having read everything within its bounds, is a discussion of time as a construct of the imagination facilitating experience (movement) but otherwise irrelevant to objective analysis of matter and being. By this I mean to say the following
1. That which we define as ourselves due to memory is already eternal (though not immortal) because it resides in the space wherein the experience was had.
2. The possibility of absolute immortality (everlasting life) can be had in spite of cosmic tragedies whereby the earth is "destroyed" with the advent of a thinking being made of pure light whose purpose it is, upon finding a point in space where the earth would be destroyed due to whatever, to go back to that space where it is not, and warn plus guide humans towards movement in a non-destructive direction.
3. This also means that the future in some ways already is, and that it is possible for those who die working in the matter of immortality to eventually be sought after by those who first achieve it even if that person were to die at some point. This would not change the bodily death experienced somewhere in space, that would still be there and it is immutable, however the experience of death within that which you define as yourself would change since you would not possess it in your memory.

You might ask why would we all not choose to have indestructible bodies of near pure light, and my response would be that being human and experiencing pleasure possibly (though not necessarily) requires sensory perception to be had solely in a human (dense in body). Thus not all would choose to be pure light because some can feasibly enjoy being human.

I am going to go out on a limb here and point out that all of this is alluded to in nearly all holy books very particularly the bible where Enoch did not experience death, nor did John the disciple, and Christ was resurrected. ( I always wonder what exactly was in that cup of wine among other things) There are other indications that would point to Christ as somebody operating on alchemical principles particularly passages discussing stones and the fact that he spent a lot of time working in mineral rich mountains in solitude. Study of the chemical properties of stones accompanied by comparisons of those properties with the exact properties contained in human physiology will yield a peculiar perspective on our nature and definition of what we are, part of the problem being that we insist that our being alive means that we are absolutely different from stones and everything else and thus they are not alive and can be of no use to us in finding anything to help sustain ourselves as opposed to acknowledging that our experience of being is different but on a very real level we are very similar.

I know that some in this community consider themselves atheists which is perfectly fine because no matter what those I call the mongrels and tradition has called the dogs say, as long as you are searching for the truth you are searching for God because God is Truth.
However I thought that perhaps it would be nice for you to know (in the event that you didn't) just how far back this mode of thinking dates and to acknowledge what could be the work of people who are very similar to you. (Enoch, Christ, John, Hermes, etc...) No, it is not a typo, I did say are.

I end with a thought - Everything that is, always was, and always will be. The key
being that Everything is. Everything you can conceive, and even more that you cannot conceive, simultaneously ever occurring.

[jaydfox]

Man, so much to think about. Between this and debates about the very nature of consciousness and of "me", and a few dozen other topics of interest, I could never hope to learn and understand all the questions--or even the ultimate question--of life, the universe, and everything, in anything resembling a typical human lifespan of 85 years. The answer, of course, is already to be had. )

As much as I yearn to learn all these secrets, and to study such relevant problems to Immortality as heat death, I am led to one glaring conclusion: Health first, Longevity second, Immortality third. Without health, both mental and physical (which affects the mental), I cannot hope to be the kind of person I would want to be to learn all these fascinating things. Without Longevity, until we've reached actuarial escape velocity and beyond, I can't reasonably hope to live to see Immortality.

I suppose I should even insert Understand Consciousness as the third step: cryonics is still not a given to work, nor is uploading, nor duplication, so understanding it and using that understanding to pick the best method(s) of continuation is a pre-requisite to Immortality. So Immortality is step four. For now. I'm sure that, given the prospect of infinite time with infinite experiences and dangers, we'd have a significant list of steps on the path to immortality. In my outline, those "dangers" are dementia, death via "disease", etc. first; death via aging, etc. second; death via failure to preserve "me", etc. third; everything else fourth. That everything else needs elaboration, and it will probably require further subclassification of other dangers (disease of the body and mind is one thing: disease of an "uploaded" entity?).

Should I really concern myself terribly about items further down the list? Only insofar as it doesn't detract from my attention, focus, and implementation of avoiding dangers to Health and Longevity.

So I will continue to focus my efforts on Health and Longevity, which luckily are not mutually exclusive. Neither, I suppose, is Immortality, but heat death is pretty far down on my list.

Don't get me wrong. I am very fascinated by the subject, and being a physicist by nature (it was my first choice of profession from about age 8 to age 17, before I switched to computer programming), it is a topic I am trying to get myself up-to-speed on.

As gea1980 said... Well, I'll just quote him, because I feel the same way:

...I found this website and it has made me unseemingly happy. I have been thinking on these topics for a few years now and it is extraordinary to find a place where people are of a like mind, though I wonder why I hadn't found this website before.

I whole-heartedly agree! The Immortality Institute is indeed a great place for like-minded people to discuss and learn, not only to enrich each other's lives, but more importantly to enrich our own. Even in our disagreements I hope that both sides learn from our encounters. I would rather be disagreeing with other aspiring immortalists than disagreeing with people hopelessly lost to the conclusion that death and "normal" lifespans are and will always be inevitable for all people.

The possibility of absolute immortality (everlasting life) can be had in spite of cosmic tragedies whereby the earth is "destroyed" with the advent of a thinking being made of pure light whose purpose it is, upon finding a point in space where the earth would be destroyed due to whatever, to go back to that space where it is not, and warn plus guide humans towards movement in a non-destructive direction.

I suspect that in a very distant future, the technology might exist to look into the then-past, our present, and extract human consciousnesses at the moment of death, thus allowing all humans who have ever lived the possibility of immortality. Much like in the novel/movie Millenium, only (possibly) without altering the timeline and without taking them physically but just by taking a quantum-level snapshot. Whether this process then leads to our being put through a Judgement before the tribunal of God, or whether it just means that we're given a second chance to be incorporated into a far-future human civilization, who knows. Even if it were possible, that doesn't necessarily mean that it would be done. But I suspect it may become possible, and certainly it might happen to at least a limited extent, if for no other reason than to perform "archeological digs" on the past, to learn more about our primitive time. But that's a discussion for another forum. Back to heat death... And pardon my digressions...

[jaydfox]

In the past, I had always liked the idea of a closed universe, and I found the concept of an open universe a bit unsettling. I liked the idea of a closed, almost symmetric universe, constantly spawning a new one in its place: it implies that there was no real "beginning". An open universe begs the question of what came before, whereas a perpetually cycling universe doesn't necessarily.

But with the prospect of greatly enhanced longevity, perhaps on the order of billions of years, I have to admit that an open universe suddenly finds a lot more appeal now than it once did!

[space3456]

There is an infinite multiverse out there with an infinite number of other universes and immortals will leave this universe and go to another universe when/if this universe has a heat death. The multiverse is the eternal place.

[space3456]

Transcript: Cosmic Secrets - The Beginning of the Universe


Quote-''In the past ten years we've had an ocean of data from satellites and the Hubble space telescope verifying the big bang theory. However physicists have a problem, where did it come from? If the big bang started everything in the universe, the stars and the galaxies then where did the big bang come from and that's going to be one of the exciting avenues of research in the twenty first century. I think of a soap bubble, in the soap bubble we live on the surface of it, it's expanding rapidly and it's actually accelerating now. Now then the question is where did this bubble come from. Well think of boiling water, boiling takes place such that out of nothing little bubbles form and these bubbles expand very rapidly. Now we think that is the basic paradigm of the multiverse.''


''Many cosmologists, Stephen Hawking included, believe that our Universe exists in an ocean of other bubbles, that in some sense big bangs are happening all the time. Even as we speak new universes could be erupting out of the multiverse, out of nothingness and that's perhaps where our universe came from, it came from the fabric of nothingness with bubbles forming and bubbles expanding rapidly and our bubble being rather special because it's lasted for billions of years and life exists on our universe. ''


''Now one of the greatest of all paradoxes is that the very small is governed by the quantum theory, the theory of atomic physics. The very large is governed by Einstein's theory of general relativity, a theory of big bangs and black holes and quasars and things and why should nature have two hands, a left hand that handles nuclear physics and a right hand that deals with the big bang and expanding universes. This gets us into the unified field theory, the holy grail of all of physics. We want an equation, one inch long, which will allow us to quote "read the mind of God". We want an equation, one inch long, which will give us the entire splendour of the big bang and black holes and expanding universe as well as the dance of sub-atomic particles, dancing in and out of a vacuum. And by the way, today we think we have it, the leading candidate is called the super string theory.''


''It's a theory that exists in ten dimensional hyper-space, now get that, ten dimensional hyper-space. I'm the co-founder of string field theory which is one of the main branches of this theory and many physicists believe that this is the best hope now of quote "reading the mind of God". There are a lot of sticky questions in physics that are still unanswered, for example, are time machines possible? Is it possible to drill a hole in space like in Alice in Wonderland's 'Through the Looking Glass'? Is it possible to create a worm hole that will allow you to go from one place, like the countryside of Oxford, to the fantastic world of wonderland, imagined by Lewis Carroll, who was of course a mathematician at Oxford University, known as Charles Dodgson. Well string theory should answer these kinds of questions as to whether or not you can bend time into a pretzel, whether or not you can leap into the tenth dimension, whether or not you can open up holes in space and time. And this is where it ultimately maybe the salvation of all intelligent life in the universe.''







''The evidence seems to indicate that we will die in a big freeze. The universe will cool down to near absolute zero temperatures, it's going to be very cold trillions of years from now. And many people believe that all intelligent life will die when the universe dies. So in other words why should we bother to wake up in the morning tomorrow, knowing that it's all for nothing anyway, that every intelligent life in the galaxy, in the universe, is gong to freeze to death when the universe cools off trillions of years from now. But there is an escape hatch. The escape hatch is the unified field theory. Perhaps if the universe gets too cold we will leave the universe.''


''We will drill a hole through hyper-space and leap into another bubble out there which is a lot warmer than our bubble, which will be very cold trillions of years from now. So in other words this unified field theory may ultimately be the salvation of all intelligent life in the universe if the universe accelerates to become extremely cold in the future. So I think that in a hundred years we will probably have a much better understanding, not just of the universe, but of universes beyond this universe.''

[tenyears]

To confront mortality you must be quite honest but you are still hanging on to life. Only when you embrace death can you live life. While you are worried where we will go. There is infinite matter. There are a number of me write now typing this idiotic message each with a slightly different slant. Every possibility exists in a single moment. Time travel does not exist for in this moment all vibration exists. Your trasaction from one vibration to another is what you view as time.

If you must worry about where we will go look upon this earth and how we pollute it. There can be one saving possibility upon this earth hydrogen. The second would be extremely simple habitates with almost a zero tech base or at least one which is completely bio. The world will not survive unless that is accomplished.

Think outside of the box. For example there is a product which can be used which is lighter than hydrogen a non pollutant and non explosive. The day I discovered what gravity truely is this occured to me in a flurry of ideas. It could be used to lift large objects upward with zero enviromental impact. It is easier to accquire than any element. What is it? Hint: All you need is the container.

[quadclops]

Think outside of the box. For example there is a product which can be used which is lighter than hydrogen a non pollutant and non explosive. The day I discovered what gravity truely is this occured to me in a flurry of ideas. It could be used to lift large objects upward with zero enviromental impact. It is easier to accquire than any element. What is it? Hint: All you need is the container.

Are you talking about balloons ?

Or cloud nines ?

Both of these use air, which has to be heated to make it bouyant. There is no element lighter than hydrogen.

[eternaltraveler]

vacuum

[tenyears]

lol, we have a winner. Most also think there are other forces in the universe how many are there actually? Truely. The smallest of small how many?

[halcyondays]

At that point in time when humans have become post human I doubt that it will even be an issue. I mean, you can throw out crazy ideas like creating other universes to travel to, or possibly transforming our current universe through future technologies. Who knows how far down we can go in terms of manipulating smaller and smaller particles past the molecular level. At that point you are essentially Gods and Gods can do anything they want. Recreate entire galaxies through manipulation of the very fabric of space and time?

I mean, our current universe could be the creation of some being from another universe who is one of billions of other beings that decided they wanted to fool around with creating life, who knows.

[jans]

jes, by that time it heats up we put "sunglasses on the sun"... and later turn ourselves in to beings of light - the minds transferrd in to the computer will then transform in to spectral realms now unknown to human race, and there is more... but you wouldn't believe so what's the point... -- someone else thought it and I agree..