"How long can life survive in the universe? Can it evolve forever, or will the third law of Thermodynamics lead to universal heat death?
Apparently there might be some ways around this fate, if intelligent life is sufficiently clever and tenacious.
Essentially life has to adapt as the universe grows older, changing itself to be able to survive when the stars grow cold. If the universe is open, there will be plenty of time to work in, but energy will become very scarce. Dyson has shown that a finite amount of energy is enough to guarantee infinite survival if it is spent sufficiently slowly (this is called the Dyson scenario
On the other hand, if the universe is closed, it will recollapse into a Big Crunch after a finite time, becoming hotter and hotter. Life has to adapt and restructure itself to these conditions, and if intelligent beings accelerate the speed of their mental processes accordingly they can even experience a subjective infinite time during the last stages of the collapse. This is called the Tipler scenario
A third possibility is that the universe may be open or closed, but new baby universes branch off due to natural or artificial causes, and intelligent life can survive indefinitely by migrating into new domains as the old become uninhabitable. This is commonly called the Linde scenario."
― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 15:35 (twenty-one years ago)
four months pass...
two years pass...
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▀▄▄▄▄▌ Brought to you by the Internet Henfap Committee for World Peace
― Heave Ho, Monday, 13 August 2007 18:25 (eighteen years ago)
three months pass...