Ultimate Fate of The Universe - Life in A Mortal Universe

Life in A Mortal Universe

Dyson's eternal intelligence hypothesis proposes that an advanced civilization could survive for an effectively infinite period of time while consuming only a finite amount of energy. Such a civilization would alternate brief periods of activity with ever longer periods of hibernation. However Lawrence Krauss and Glenn Starkman have argued that this proposal ignores the power demands of the alarm clock needed to end the hibernation. They also argued that quantum mechanics limits the number of states that a finite system can have, and so prohibits any civilization with access to only a finite amount of energy from having more than a finite number of thoughts.

Recent work in inflationary cosmology, string theory, and quantum mechanics has moved the discussion of the ultimate fate of the universe in directions distinct from the scenarios set out by Dyson. Theoretical work by Eric Chaisson finds that an expanding spacetime gives rise to an increasing "entropy gap", casting doubt on the heat death hypothesis. Invoking Ilya Prigogine's work on far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics, their analysis suggests that this entropy gap may contribute to information, and hence to the formation of structure.

Meanwhile, Andrei Linde, Alan Guth, Ted Harrison, and Ernest Sternglass argue that inflationary cosmology strongly suggests the presence of a multiverse, and that it would be practical even with today's knowledge for intelligent beings to generate and transmit de novo information into a distinct universe. Alan Guth has speculated that a civilization at the top of the Kardashev scale might create fine-tuned universes in a continuation of the evolutionary drive to exist, grow, and multiply. This has been further developed by the Selfish Biocosm Hypothesis, and by the proposal that the existence of the fundamental physical constants may be subject to a kind of cosmological natural selection. Moreover, recent theoretical work on the unresolved quantum gravity problem and the holographic principle suggests that traditional physical quantities may possibly themselves be describable in terms of exchanges of information, which in turn raises questions about the applicability of older cosmological models.