10^86 fundamental particles in the entire observable universe is great, until you have 2% compound annual interest for ten millennia that's giving you 1.02^10,000 growth factor, which is 10^86.
In 100 years at a 2% growth rate we'd have to grow the economy about 7x.
This seems quite do-able. We would need significant technological advancement but this seems to be happening; there is no technological ceiling. We do not need to colonize space to achieve this, even though it would be nice to colonize space and give us another few hundred years of runway.
There's no reason to assume we can't maintain 2% global growth for the duration of our lifetimes. Whatever is after that we'll have to leave for future generations. Sustainability is important. Controlling climate change is important. I expect the world will look quite different in 100 years and at some point we must trust in the future generations.
The article's point, which I fruitlessly tried to support, is that the growth must at some point stop: we're living in a very remarkable era regardless of exactly how long it can go on for.
Sometimes growth can in fact reduce resource demands.
Growth just means that we learn to do things better.
Prove it.
Every breath you take is 10^24 or so atoms.
> Growth just means that we learn to do things better.
Up to 100%, and no more.
Computers today are better and take fewer atoms to make than 40 years ago.
Still, I should've phrased it better.
Prove that growth can continue when the transistor are made from single atoms as standard.
And just in case you suggest fission, hydrogen atoms.
They aren't consumed, they are being recycled.
Okay, once we found the cure to all illness; and once Physics and Math are fully understood, I agree we will be done.
Maths has the problem that it's apparently possible to prove that for any system there must be statements which are both true and unprovable. (I don't understand how that works).
Physics will always have the question of if anything else might be hiding at a deeper level; however, we get to the point of "we can no longer make stuff from atoms" well before that point.
On the topic of fancy new physics: some time back, when the Alcubierre drive was piquing my interest, I wondered how hard it would be to engineer a Casimir cavity with negative mass. The answer was that (with the photon-only approximation I have to use given I'm a hobbyist not a proper physicist) you can't with any standard particles, as even neutron lasagne can't get close enough to exclude more than the mass of the sheets themselves.