Surviving the End

[Illuminati]

This is a question I came up with after I finished the book "Hyperspace" by Michio Kaku.

 

Hypothetically, suppose humanity survives, prospers and actually explores space. Also suppose that we are able to survive for millions upon billions of years. Going through a few evolutions along the way we eventually become a class III civilization on the Kardashev scale. We master and are able to collect all energy from our galaxy.

 

Now, suppose that we survive up until the universe begins to end. This is where either the universe contracts in on itself ending in a singularity (the big crunch) or the universe continues to expand ending in where everything hits absolute zero (the big freeze).

 

Which one of these do you believe we will be able to survive?

Remember that our technology increases exponentially and we are by then a Class III civilization.

 

I personally believe that if the universe contracts in on itself we will be able to survive it if we just move outside the area where the singularity is occuring. This is that we are assuming that space is infinite. Gravity will be much less millions of light years away from the point of retraction.

 

But what do you think?

[Prime-Evil]

I am not sure what time is doing all this time. Does the universe ever actually end? Did it ever actually have a beginning? Or are these points just limits that are never actually realized, like absolute temperature, or a perfect vacuum, or the speed of light?

 

I think you also have to define what humanity is. When did it first come into existence. Were the parents of the first humans not human. Were all of the offsprings of humans human? Will all of the offsprings of future humans be human? Are we still human? I believe the answers to these questions are subjective and arbitrary, and not absolute. Of course, so is everything else.

 

"Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless.

Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds."

- Chief Seattle

.

[Severian]

It is probably possible to survive either given enough technological sophistication. However, I voted for 'There is no surviving either' since I don't think a Class III civilization would be technologically advanced enough to do it.

[YT2095]

life has a certain undeniable tenacity for survival (albeit "Of Sorts").

I should imagine that by the time the universe expands to a cold death, the word "Human" (if not entirely forgotten) will be a rather Quaint term if not downright insulting, certainly as far the latin Homo Sapien Sapien part is concerned.

of course by This time, it`s quite possible that we`ll have discovered how traverse to Other Universes (if there is such a thing) and thus the "Cold Death" maynot be an issue.

 

other than that, Cold Death means just exactly That as it says on the box, ergo, if We`re Still part of the current universe, our fate will by default, have to be the same as.

[Phi for All]

If a class III society relies on energy collected from the galaxies, wouldn't the Big Freeze be and end to that energy? What could possibly feed our need for energy if there is none?

[insane_alien]

well a Class III civilization might be able to jump to another universe(if other universes exist) if they can then they could survive and opens up the possibility of a type IV civilization

[Illuminati]

Well, with string theory, there is another theory that goes along with that one.

We basically live in 4 dimensions, the other 6 are balled up into something the size of a plancks length.

The theory goes that upon the time of the singularity (the big crunch), the other 6 dimensions will open up once the former 4 have been nearly destroyed. Ergo, we will be able to jump to the other 6 if we find a way to do so. And we find that the string theory really is truth.

 

Also, whats stopping the Type III civilization from saving unwanted energy. Like the scientologists and their eternal battery.

[YT2095]

OK, so Now we`re into the realms of Fantasy.

I`ll take my leave, until such time as it becomes Science

[bascule]

I`ll take my leave, until such time as it becomes Science

 

Fantasy is fun! As for my conjecture, I say the universe ends when consciousness decides it should, so I said we would survive both (or prevent them from happening entirely)

[Illuminati]

Heh, I was just kidding about that eternal battery thing.

 

But those extra 6 dimensions came right out of the book. If you'd like, I can site you the exact pages or paragraphs.

[J.C.MacSwell]

Heh' date=' I was just kidding about that eternal battery thing.

 

But those extra 6 dimensions came right out of the book. [b']If you'd like, I can site you the exact pages or paragraphs[/b].

 

I'm game! I have a half baked steady state theory somewhat along these lines that is not fit for print but I'm interested.

[[Tycho?]]

For me, billions of years is way, way too large a number to even make guesses about the level of technology possesed by humanity. I figure that by that time too many things will be fundamentally different. Who knows what humanities motives and abilities will be like then.

[Phi for All]

But those extra 6 dimensions came right out of the book. If you'd like, I can site you the exact pages or paragraphs.

But dimensions are not worlds or universes. They merely give a perspective for measuring what already exists. Theoretically, you could use a fourth spatial dimension to travel from here to another galaxy with a single step? but you couldn't live on that dimension any more than you could live on length or width.

 

Perhaps I misunderstand dimensions. That's entirely possible.

[Severian]

Perhaps I misunderstand dimensions. That's entirely possible.

 

No - you are right. You can't live in the 'other dimensions'.

 

Anyway, If the other 6 (or 7 for M-theory) dimensions exist they are as much a part of our universe as the first 4. So if entropy causes the heat death of the universe in the first 4, it causes it in the others too.

[SkepticLance]

Actually, we could not survive either, unless, as Insane Alien suggests, we can cross to a hypothetical other universe, or find some other theoretical loophole we just do not know about today.

 

On the Big Freeze. There was a Scientific American article on this subject a few years ago. The scientists who wrote it had worked out the details. Their verdict was that eventually the energy density would be too low to support any kind of life at all. This would, according to them, take about a trillion years.

 

On the Big Crunch. According to Stephen Hawking "Brief History of Time", space itself is just a part of the universe. If the universe shrinks to a singularity, so will space. We cannot be 'outside' the shrunken universe, since there is no outside. Everything is within.

[Phi for All]

I voted Both or Other. To say we definitely will or definitely won't survive either or both is far too conclusive at this point. Having come as far as we have technologically in the last thousand years, who could definitively say for certain what we might be able to accomplish ten million or a hundred million or a billion years from now?

[Bettina]

I voted for other. If the universe should reverse itself and crunch then its an oscillating universe and life will begin all over again.

 

If it does not reverse and simply uses up all its fuel, burns out, keeps expanding until all the known and unknown particles decay, we will end up with a huge, dark, cold, void.

 

Then, after an unimaginable amount of time, and for yet another unknown reason...******BANG!!!!!!!!!

 

IMHO Universes are born and die all the time and life is endless. I just don't believe ours is the only one.

 

Bettina

[Illuminati]

Ok, here is the quote I promised.

 

Taken directly from Hyperspace by Michio Kaku

 

"However, there is one possible escape. If all of space-time is collapsing into a fiery cataclysm, then the only way to escape the Big Crunch is to leave space and time--escape via hyperspace. This may not be as far-fetched as it sounds. Computer calculations performed with Kaluza-Klein and superstring theories have shown that moments after Creation, the four-dimensional universe expanded at the expense of the six-dimensional universe. Thus the ultimate fate of the four- and the six-dimensional universes are linked.

 

Assuming that this basic picture is correct, our six-dimensional twin universe may gradually expand, as our own four-dimensional universe collapses. Moments before our universe shrinks to nothing, intelligent life may realize that the six-dimensional universe is opening up, and find a means to exploit that fact.

 

Interdimensional travel is impossible today because our sister universe has shrunk down to the Planck scale. However, in the final stages of a collapse, the sister universe may open up, making dimensional travel possible once again. If the sister universe expands enough, then matter and energy may escape into is, making an escape hatch possible for any intelligent beings smart enough to calculate the dynamics of space-time.

 

The late columbia University physicist Gerald Feinberg speculated on this long shot of escaping the ultimate compression of the universe through extra dimensions:"

"At present, this is no more than a science fiction plot. However, if there are more dimensions than those we know, or four-dimensional space-times in addition to the one we inhabit, then I think it very likely that there are physical phenomena that provide connections between them. It seems plausible that if intelligence persists in the universe, it will, in much less time than the many billions of years before the Big Crunch, find out whether there is anything to this speculation, and if so how to take advantage of it."

 

There ya go. Straight from the book, unchanged.

 

It's really a very good book, a long book, but good. You all would probably enjoy reading it. It certainly raises some good questions.

[Meh]

I don't know, I bet that we know so little about the universe that our knowledge is unnoticed. We base everything on how we live, and what we need to survive. We breathe oxygen, but who is to say that some other civilization survives on hydrogen, or whatever. Life keeps surprising us. Every day we find life forms who can survive in extremely hot/cold temperatures, without light etc. We are a part of the universe and universe cannot exist without us, because we are meant to be here, at this time at least. Who knows if time exists at all, if you can travel into past (theoretically possible in at least some form) then it has never passed, right?

 

Off subject, has anyone read "A world without time"?