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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org] <b>On Behalf Of </b>john clark<br><b>Subject:</b> [ExI] Do we live in a universe that allows infinite computation?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><table class=MsoNormalTable border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0><tr><td valign=top style='padding:0in 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>>…</span>Back in 1993 Frank Tipler wrote an interesting book called "The Physics of Immortality"<span style='color:#1F497D'>…<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>How many of us here studied Tippler in college physics? I did. His text was very popular and readable.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'> <span style='color:#1F497D'>>…</span>In 2007 the poor man went a little funny in the head, you know, just a little funny, and he went and did a silly thing; he wrote another book saying we should <span style='color:#1F497D'>…</span> check for radiation around the tomb of the Blessed Virgin Marry that was caused by an intense beam of neutrinos that must have shot out of the bottom of her feet as she ascended into heaven<span style='color:#1F497D'>…<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>I have the Physics of Immortality, but didn’t get this other book. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>Couple things about this comment: in a sense there were intense beams of neutrinos that shot out the bottom of her feet, if you don’t push too hard on the adjective “intense.” There are intense beams of neutrinos shooting out the bottoms of your feet right now. Since neutrinos scarcely interact with matter at all, yet there is one created with each nuclear fusion, we can estimate the theoretical neutrino flux from the collective stars all about, overhead constantly regardless of the orientation of our feet. So there would be (in a kind of loose sense) a beam of neutrinos shooting out every surface of our bodies constantly, as well as a (~)beam going in the other direction simultaneously. Neutrinos are our friends. Such interesting little spin carriers are they, never causing problems much, but so useful are they in protecting our cherished notions of conservation of angular momentum.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>Ja, I know I am stretching the point to give old Frank some wiggle room, the way we do for all our favored old professors in their dotage. If he said the neutrinos would result in radiation around the tomb of the blessed “Virgin” Mary, I would suggest he review how seldom a neutrino causes anything to form a radioactive isotope.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>>…</span> Tipler's predictions turned out to be wrong, some spectacularly wrong; he predicted the expansion of the universe would slow down, then it would stop, then it would change direction and collapse in on itself<span style='color:#1F497D'>…</span>John K Clark<span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>That this notion turned out to be apparently wrong is one of the saddest things that have ever happened to me. This of course means I have had a happier life than I deserve. That aside, the closed universe is an idea I claim to have independently thought of in high school. I was reading about the big bang and how space is quantized. I theorized that if the universe is closed, then there is a finite number of particles in a finite 4-space. Both are unimaginably large of course, but finite. If so, there is a finite number of ways a finite number of particles can arrange themselves in a finite quantized space. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>Then the line of reasoning goes thus: if the universe exploded forth in a big bang, then after it collapses, the same thing can happen again. If so, and time is infinite (for how can time be finite?) then there are an infinite number of big bangs, over a quite unimaginably large span of time. If so, every possible combination of particles in finite space would eventually occur in infinite space time. If so, this exact arrangement of everything will happen again. Furthermore, it will happen again an infinite number of times. And it has already happened before. An infinite number of times.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>spike<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'> <br><br><o:p></o:p></p></td></tr></table><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></body></html>