Re: Expanding forever...

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
24 Dec 1998 00:56:52 +0100

"Billy Brown" <bbrown@conemsco.com> writes:

> The short answer is, you can't. There are all sorts of fancy tricks you can
> use to keep yourself going for a very long time, but you can't reverse
> entropy. The energy density of the universe declines until it becomes
> impossible to build any sort of organized system.

On the other hand, you also have a lower temperature and more space which can be used to put the ever lower energy to better uses - the signal / noise ratio gets better, and previously too disordered energy can be used. The important thing here is is which factors increase the fastest; this seems to be dependent on the actual development history of the universe and can be tricky to calculate a priori.

> Fortunately, it doesn't matter. The entire big bang/inflation model has
> been under increasing strain for the last two decades, as it becomes
> increasingly difficult to reconcile its predictions with actual
> observations.

Even if that is true it doesn't change the problem of indefinite survival. As far as I know nobody is suggesting steady state theories at least, and without them you get a Dyson or Tipler choice, so to say. 

Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y