How to Survive the End of the Universe (2014) | Hacker News Reader

How to Survive the End of the Universe (2014)

discovermagazine.com

26 pointsfirebaze18 comments

When the stars go out, we can live as virtualized entities in a big computer built around a black hole for a few quadrillion years, by using the hawking radiation as energy source. We have like 200 billion years to collect as much matter in our local supercluster as possible. After the black holes evaporated, maybe can use proton decay.

According to Isaac Arthur (on youtube. I highly recommend it).

Title says 2014, but the article is actually 2004.

An interesting read for sure. I'll admit though, I couldn't help think it unlikely that our present civilization will last the thousands of years necessary to reach the technology level he speaks of. HN readers know the myriad threads hanging over our heads so I won't try to list them all, but suffice it to say, I'm inclined to believe the great filter is still in front of us.

Wikipedia's "Timeline of the far Future" [0] gives a 95% chance for hunans to be extinct in 10k years.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future

By one calculation, other person calculated 7.8 mil years for 95% of extinction mentioned on the same page.

That's not about civilization though.

"A cold, dark universe is billions, if not trillions, of years in the future. Between now and then, humans will face plenty of other calamities: wars and pestilences, ice ages, asteroid impacts, and the eventual consumption of Earth—in about 5 billion years—as our sun expands into a red giant star. To last until the very end of the universe, an advanced civilization will have to master interstellar travel, spreading far and wide throughout the galaxy and learning to cope with a slowing, cooling, darkening cosmos. Their greatest challenge will be figuring out how to not be here when the universe dies, essentially finding a way to undertake the ultimate journey of fleeing this universe for another.

Such a plan may sound absurd. But there is nothing in physics that forbids such a venture. Einstein’s theory of general relativity allows for the existence of wormholes, sometimes called Einstein-Rosen bridges, that connect parallel universes. Among theoretical and experimental physicists, parallel universes are not science fiction. The notion of the multiverse—that our universe coexists with an infinite number of other universes—has gained ground among working scientists." From article... The infinite concept is probably a human made conncept so and anyway 1 million years is probably more than enough to change your "identity" a few hundreds time (at least). So this surving the end of the universe is a bit too much to consider even in the wildest fantasies ;)

Relevant SF story:

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?44207

There was also this:

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1044

It was assumed that the universe would eventually stop contracting and end up in a "big crunch".

The plot is basically "bussard ramjet spacecraft gets its engines stuck and goes faster and faster until the universe ends and a new one expands".

Ignoring for narrative purposes there not being anywhere "outside" of a contracting universe.

If there would really be wormholes, did Einstein or anyone else have an estimate on how we would perceive the time elapsed after passing through one?

I understand the definition of a wormhole is the entrance is a black hole, the exit is a white hole, that's what I read once. Means one way journey.

Maybe we will be able to generate black holes with a white hole to emit ourselves to another place, but that would still not mean we would escape the end of the universe. Unless I understood wrong and a wormhole is not a black and white hole construct, but leading to another universe.

I dunno maybe someone , preferably Michael Nolan , should make a movie depicting such a concept.

Upon further research, I have found an academic source, the theory unlike my 2 scenarios, it's a mix, quote: "The complete Schwarzschild geometry consists of a black hole, a white hole, and two Universes connected at their horizons by a wormhole."

https://jila.colorado.edu/~ajsh/bh/schww.html

> I understand the definition of a wormhole is the entrance is a black hole, the exit is a white hole, that's what I read once. Means one way journey.

This is not the definition. The source of your confusion might be that the simplest solution to the Einstein field equations that contains a black hole (called Schwarzschild solution[0]), also contains a white hole and a separate, let's say, "universe" when considering its so-called maximally extended[1] solution. The two universes (region I and III in the diagram in [1]) are separated by the black hole and the white hole (region II and IV in the diagram in [1]) and there's only an "infinitesimally small" connection between them, called an Einstein-Rosen bridge[2], which is usually considered to be the simplest example of a (non-traversable) wormhole.

People have speculated that on the "other side" of a black hole there's a white hole ejecting the matter swallowed by the black hole into another universe (which would kinda be a wormhole) but this is pure speculation.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_metric

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kruskal%E2%80%93Szekeres_coord...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole#Einstein%E2%80%93Rose...

Wouldn't it be simpler to build a time machine and go back in time in the same universe to a nicer time ?

Now we’re in danger of just listing plots of Christopher Nolan movies.

I'm all in for fan fiction effort :)

Sort of like the plot of the OG Star Trek episode All Our Yesterdays. Going back in time to avoid your planet death: Now that’s nostalgia for real.

> This was the basis of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which may be the most scientifically accurate depiction of an encounter with an extraterrestrial intelligence.

This line got me thinking, is Stanislaw Lem's "Swarm" more scientifically accurate than the watchers in Space Odyssey?

Just make sure you make it to Milliways [1] in time and you'll survive it just fine.

[1] https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Milliways

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