[ExI] The tools humanity will need for living in the year 1 trillion

[John Clark]

On Wed, Jul 11, 2018 at 3:47 AM, John Grigg
<possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com> wrote:
\

> >"
> *The paper, "Securing Fuel for our Frigid Cosmic Future", recently
> appeared online. As he indicates in his study, when the Universe is ten
> times its current age (roughly 138 billion years old), all stars outside
> the Local Group of galaxies will no be accessible to us since they will be
> receding away faster than the speed of light. For this reason, he
> recommends that humanity follow the lesson from Aesop's fable, "The Ants
> and the Grasshopper"."Dr. Loeb also indicated where humanity (or other
> advanced civilizations) should consider relocating to when the expansion of
> the Universe causes the stars of the Local Group to expand beyond the
> cosmic horizon. Within 50 million light years, he indicates, likes the
> Virgo Cluster, which contains about a thousands times more matter than the
> Milky Way Galaxy. The second closest is the Coma Cluster, a collection of
> over 1000 galaxies located about 336 million light years away.*"
> https://phys.org/news/2018-06-tools-humanity-year-trillion.html#jCp



I think moving to the Virgo or Coma Cluster would just be kicking the
problem down the road, if you want a permanent solution and true
immortality you’re going to have to extract useful work from Dark Energy
itself. Back in February I sent a post to the list that might have some
relevance to this subject, I will repeat it now:
===

For years physicists debated if gravitational waves were real, some said
they contained no energy and so were just a mathematical artifact of no
physical significance. But then in 1957 Richard Feynman came up with a
thought experiment that showed gravitational waves must contain energy and
thus must have real physical effects, the sticky bead argument. It sure
seems to me it could also show that work can be extracted from the
expansion of the universe.

Feynman said place two beads on a sticky rigid rod, the beads can slide
freely but there is a small amount of friction between the beads and the
rod. If the rod is placed transversely to the direction of propagation of
the gravitational wave then atomic forces will hold the length of the rod
fixed, or almost fixed, but the proper distance between the two beads would
be free to oscillate. So the beads would have to rub against the rod, and
the friction from that would produce heat, and with heat you could run a
steam engine and get work out of it.

Why couldn’t the same argument also be used to show you could get work out
of the expansion of the universe? We already know that if local forces are
strong enough they can overcome the general expansion and acceleration of
the universe, that’s why the Andromeda galaxy is approaching the Milky Way,
the 2 galaxies are so close that the attraction is stronger than the
repulsion caused by the expansion of the universe. The atomic forces within
the rod should keep its length the same or almost the same just as it did
for gravitational waves, but the distance between the beads should increase
due to the expansion of the universe and if there is friction I don’t see
how heat could be avoided.

I think although it would work theoretically it would be ridiculously
impractical to do now, but perhaps not in the very distant future if the
acceleration of the universe is itself accelerating and we’re heading for
the Big Rip. Most think it will never happen but it depends on the ratio
between the dark energy pressure and its energy density. Physicist Robert
R. Caldwell points out that if this ratio is even slightly less than −1
then the Big Rip will happen, its just a matter of when. For example, if
the ratio is −1.5 then the Big Rip will happen in 22 billion years, the
Milky Way would be ripped apart 60 million years before the Big Rip, the
solar system would be ripped apart 3 months before the Big Rip, in the last
2 or 3 minutes stars and planets would be ripped apart and in the last few
seconds even atoms would come apart. And then protons and neutrons would be
ripped into quarks.  Most think that would mean the end of any hope for a
immortal life but maybe not, subjective immortality might still be
possible. In fact for immortality to happen the Big Rip may be necessary.

By immortality I mean the ability to have an infinite number of new
thoughts, and that would require a infinite number of calculations, and
that would require a infinite amount of work. It might be possible to get
that much energy before the Big Rip. Your computer would continually get
smaller as it was getting pulled apart but the energy available to run what
was still intact would keep getting larger because the heat from friction
would keep getting hotter and the cold sink of the external universe would
keep getting colder increasing the efficiency of the heat engine. If the
increase in speed of the remaining computer more than compensated for the
decrease in the number of processors then physical law may allow for an
infinite (and not just astronomical) number of calculations to be made in
the finite amount of time between now and The Big Rip.

 John K Clark
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