Transcript The End of the Universe and Possibility of Intelligent

The End of the Universe and
Possibility of Intelligent Interaction
Eric A. Jackson
C. Graham Buffkin
Dr. Orville Day
The Beginning of the Universe
• In order to fathom the End of the Universe one should have
a firm grasp on its beginning.
• One theory suggested by Morris states that at the first
fraction of a second after the universe began some X
particle was created. This X particle decayed into either
matter or antimatter, but not equally so.
After all the X particles disappeared, there may have been
something like a billion and one particles of matter for every
billion particles of antimatter. The particles and antiparticles
began annihilating one another… only matter particles remained
(77).
This explains why the prevalent detection of antiparticles has not
been observed throughout our current universe. And confirms
the attribute of their rarity.
The Current Age of the Universe
•The age of the
universe is
estimated to be 13.7
billion years.
First Life on Earth
• The earliest forms of life on Earth emerged
about 3.8 billion years ago, or 9.9 billion years
after the Big Bang.
• Furthermore, the first Homo Sapiens evolved
just 250,000 years ago, or 3.79975 billion
years after life emerged on Earth.
Evolution of Our Intelligence
• Chyba and Hand purport that the best means of quantifying intelligence in
animals is to create a ratio of the size of a species brain compared to the
typical size of a brain of a species of the same expected mass.
• Encephalization Quotient, EQ= (brain weight)/[ 0.12 (body weight)0.67]
which is Jerison’s 1973 definition.
• If Homo sapiens evolved from Homo habilis and Homo erectus
respectively, then the EQ evolved in such a fashion of 4.3 (habilis) to 5.3
(erectus) in a matter of 600,000 years. That is a rate a 1.67x10-6 EQ per
year. Then subsequently from 5.3 (erectus) to 7.1 (sapien sapien) in an
elapsed time of 1.65 million years; which is a rate of 1.091x10-6 EQ per
year.
• This might not seem like such an extraordinary jump, however if one
considers the fact that the evolution of intelligence went from practically
non existent (i.e. single celled organisms) to low intelligence (i.e. from
EQ<1 to EQ>1) over a course of approximately 3 billion years that is a rate
(0.3x10-9 EQ per year) increase by 3 orders of magnitude in a period of
time less than 1% from the first stage to the third.
The Potential of Future Intelligence
• The potential for intelligence of life say 1 million years from
now could possibly then yield a life form with an EQ of at
least 10. The capabilities of such a life form are practically
imponderable to us, just as an ape (EQ=1.9) would not be
able to ponder our capabilities of performing calculus.
• With such an evolved state of intelligence these beings
could perceivably be able to manipulate the space around
them similar to the way humans are changing the planet
Earth today, except instead of a planet, they might be able
to change the solar system, galaxy, or galaxies.
• How this might effect the fate of the universe can only be
imagined by humans today, let that tremendous feat be the
responsibility of those to come, but let’s attempt to give
them an accurate model of the end towards which to work.
Critical Density
• Just 12 years ago we determined that the
universe is at the critical density. This would
imply an ever-expanding universe with time
going to infinity.
• However, life's place in this universe seems to
have a more finite place.
• This is because of the energy that we are so
dependent upon. This energy is limited to the
lifetime of our star’s nuclear fuel.
The Inevitability of Energy Exhaustion
• In The Fate of the Universe, Morris states that “nothing
goes on forever (129).” He estimates that 100 billion
years from now, galaxies will effectively die out, black
holes will evaporate, radiation become weaker and
weaker, and the proton itself will decay into bits of
energy. Despite everlasting expansion the fate is that of
nothingness.
• In other words, the supply of nuclear energy that the
stars as we know them will be nearly exhausted,
leaving only a few white dwarves, neutron starts, and
black holes in a sea of “stellar corpses (130).”
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
• Therefore, that leaves the universe filled with
nothing but energy as protons decay and black
holes evaporate. All matter is inevitably
changed back into other forms of energy. The
fate of the universe is predicted by the second
law of thermodynamics to be one of uniform
distribution throughout the confines of the
volume of the universe.
Bibliography
• Richard Morris, Cosmic Questions: Galactic Halos,
Cold Dark Matter, and The End of Time, John
Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 1993.
• John Baez, A Brief History of the Universe, 2008,
<http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/timeline.html>
• Christopher F. Chyba, Kevin P. Hand,
Astrobiology: The Study of the Living Universe,
Annual Reviews, 2005.
• Richard Morris, The Fate of the Universe, 1982.