From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rms2g@virginia.edu)
Date: Tue Aug 20 2002 - 15:47:10 MDT
Lee Corbin:
Here is my idea from about 30 years ago. I was always marveling
at the Big Ideas and Big Conceptions about extremely tiny times
following the big bang. That is, there was the Planck Time at
10^-43 seconds, and later on there was Guth's inflation time that
kicks in at 10^-37 seconds and so on.
So I wrote a brief history of a civilization that flourished
between 10^-2,103,000 and 10^-2,000,505 which displayed
Toynbee's period three-and-one-half beat rise and fall pattern,
and which didn't finally die out entirely (due mostly from
internal stresses but assisted by barbarian invasions) until
10^-1,997,476 seconds. The only notable thing that I recall
writing about was the fierce debate among scientists concerning
the extreme future of the universe, and whether life of any
kind would be possible after, say, 10^-5,000 seconds.
### You are in good company - Stanislaw Lem wrote a similar story about 40
years ago, about the ultra-fast evolution of creatures in solar plasma,
indicating that every star must be a hive of godlike intelligences, right
from the thermonuclear ignition.
Rafal
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:16:17 MST