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Will the Universe End?


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#61 LET ME GET EM!

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Posted 19 January 2009 - 11:20 PM

Except for consciousness, gravity is the weakest yet most pervasive force in nature. Indeed, gravity controls universal motion. But, the fifth force of nature -- human consciousness -- is the grand-unifying force controlling all existence. Conscious force is more subtle to specific measurement and mathematical quantification than gravity. Still, consciousness is the most noticeable force on planet Earth. Moreover, consciousness is the only force that can alter the otherwise predestined courses of the other four forces of nature: gravitational, electromagnetic, weak nuclear, strong nuclear. ...Consciousness is the force that unifies all forces and heals the seeming breaches of nature caused by quantum "uncertainties". As a law of nature expressed by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, facts asserted as truth are never certain. But, principles contextually determined through integrated honesty are always certain. Thus, for example, one can have certainty about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle without paradox or contradiction: (1) Metaphysically one can be certain that any particle always has an exact position and momentum at any exact time. But, epistemologically one can be certain that exact position and momentum cannot be simultaneously measured...at least not directly. (2) Measurements can be validly done in Euclidean/Galilean/Newtonian coordinate systems or in noneuclidean/relativistic/quantum-mechanical systems, depending on the object measured and the accuracy desired. And finally, (3) the indeterminate and probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics does not negate the laws of identity, noncontradiction, or cause and effect. The decay of radioactive atoms, for example, are both indeterminate and probabilistic. But, each decay has an identifiable, noncontradictory cause.

#62 johnf

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Posted 22 February 2009 - 02:19 AM

Pardon the long C&P below. I just love reading Dyson sometimes. When he opens a topic, he really dives in!

Though in all honesty, I think we are an extremely young species to know exactly how the universe works and what it's ultimate fate is. I think we'll have a better answer in a few million years from now


"Lazarus Long" wrote:
sage advice folks
It is better to keep an open mind than assume we have all the answers
But at least we can finally say that we have scratched the surface of the truth and it is out there.



Got anything better to be doing for the next 10^(10^76) years?

Time without end: Physics and biology in an open universe Freeman J. Dyson
http://www.aleph.se/...Omega/dyson.txt

A year ago Steven Weinberg published an excellent book, _The First Three
Minutes_, (Weinberg, 1977), explaining to a lay audience the state of our
knowledge about the beginning of the universe. In his sixth chapter he
describes in detail how progress in understanding and observing the universe
was delayed by the timidity of theorists.

"This is often the way it is in physics - our mistake is not that we take our
theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough. It is
always hard to realize that these numbers and equations we play with at our
desks have something to do with the real world. Even worse, there often seems
to be a general agreement that certain phenomena are just not fit
subjects for respectable theoretical and experimental effort. Alpher, Herman
and Gamow (1948) deserve tremendous credit above all for being willing to take
the early universe seriously, for working out what known physical laws have to
say about the first three minutes. Yet even they did not take the final step,
to convince the radio astronomers that they ought to look for a microwave
radiation background. The most important thing accomplished by the ultimate
discovery of the 3 K radiation background (Penzias and Wilson, 1965) was to
force all of us to take seriously the idea that there _was_ an early
universe."

Thanks to Penzias and Wilson, Weinberg and others, the study of the beginning
of the universe is now respectable. Professional physicists who investigate
the first three minutes or the first microsecond no longer need to feel shy
when they talk about their work. But the end of the universe is another
matter. I have searched the literature for papers about the end of the
universe (Rees, 1969; Davies, 1973; Islam, 1977 and 1979; Barrow and Tipler,
1978). This list is certainly not complete. But the striking thing about these
papers is that they are written in an apologetic or jocular style, as if the
authors were begging us not to take them seriously. The study of the remote
future still seems to be as disreputable today as the study of the remote past
was thirty years ago. I am particularly indebted to Jamal Islam for an early
draft of his 1977 paper which started me thinking seriously about the remote
future. I hope with these lectures to hasten the arrival of the day when
eschatology, the study of the end of the universe, will be a respectable
scientific discipline and not merely a branch of theology.

Weinberg himself is not immune to the prejudices that I am trying to dispel.
At the end of his book about the past history of the universe, he adds a short
chapter about the future. He takes 150 pages to describe the first three
minutes, and then dismisses the whole of the future in five pages. Without any
discussion of technical details, he sums up his view of the future in twelve
words:

"The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless."

Weinberg has here, perhaps unintentionally, identified a real problem. It is
impossible to calculate in detail the long-range future of the universe
without including the effects of life and intelligence. It is impossible to
calculate the capabilities of life and intelligence without touching, at least
peripherally, philosophical questions. If we are to examine how intelligent
life may be able to guide the physical development of the universe for its own
purposes, we cannot altogether avoid considering what the values and purposes
of intelligent life may be. But as soon as we mention the words value and
purpose, we run into one of the most firmly entrenched taboos of
twentieth-century science. Hear the voice of Jacques Monod (1970), high priest
of scientific rationality, in his book _Chance and Necessity_:

"Any mingling of knowledge with values is unlawful, forbidden."

Monod was one of the seminal minds in the flowering of molecular biology in
this century. It takes some courage to defy his anathema. But I will defy him,
and encourage others to do so. The taboo against mixing knowledge with
values arose during the nineteenth century out of the great battle between the
evolutionary biologists led by Thomas Huxley and the churchmen led by Bishop
Wilberforce. Huxley won the battle, but a hundred years later Monod and
Weinberg were still fighting Bishop Wilberforce's ghost. Physicists today have
no reason to be afraid of Wilberforce's ghost.
If our analysis of the
long-range future leads us to raise questions related to the ultimate meaning
and purpose of life, then let us examine these questions boldly and without
embarrassment. If our answers to these questions are naive and preliminary, so
much the better for the continued vitality of our science.

I propose in these lectures to explore the future as Weinberg in his book
explored the past. My arguments will be rough and simple but always
quantitative. The aim is to establish numerical bounds within which the
destiny of the universe must lie. I shall make no further apology for mixing
philosophical speculations with mathematical equations.
...

The prevailing view (Weinberg, 1977) holds the future of open and closed
universes to be equally dismal. According to this view, we have only the
choice of being fried in a closed universe or frozen in an open one. The end
of the closed universe has been studied in detail by Rees (1969).
Regrettably
I have to concur with Rees' verdict that in this case we have no escape from
frying. No matter how deep we burrow into the earth to shield ourselves from
the ever-increasing fury of the blue-shifted background radiation, we can only
postpone by a few million years our miserable end. I shall not discuss the
closed universe in detail, since it gives me a feeling of claustrophobia to
imagine our whole existence confined within the box (4).
I only raise one
question which may offer us a thin chance of survival. Supposing that we
discover the universe to be naturally closed and doomed to collapse, is it
conceivable that by intelligent intervention, converting matter into radiation
and causing energy to flow purposefully on a cosmic scale, we could break open
a closed universe and change the topology of space-time so that only a part of
it would collapse and another part of it would expand forever? I do not know
the answer to this question.
If it turns out that the universe is closed, we
shall still have about 10^10 years to explore the possibility of a
technological fix that would burst it open.

...

(1) Does the universe freeze into a state of permanent physical quiescence as
it expands and cools?

(2) Is it possible for life and intelligence to survive indefinitely?

(3) Is it possible to maintain communication and transmit information across
the constantly expanding distances between galaxies?

Tentatively, I shall answer them with a no, a yes, and a maybe. My answers are
perhaps only a reflection of my optimistic philosophical bias. I do not expect
everybody to agree with the answers. My purpose is to start people thinking
seriously about the questions.


I found it funny, that some people here are thinking in time scales like this, and of engineering pocket lifeboat universes, or entirely new ones... and an article writer thinks only in terms smaller and shorter timescales than stellar engineering can handle!
The Sun running out of fuel in its core, or the Earth stopping spinning because of tidal friction, or the galaxies in our neighborhood all dropping in for a visit... These are small problems. (Unless we go extinct when the oil runs out, that is).




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