effects of intelligence on the universe

[Metric]

The universe is currently on the order of about 10^10 years old. If things evolve as we understand them, all nuclear fusion will have ended and all stars will be dead at a few degrees Kelvin in roughly 10^17 years. (numbers coming from http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/end.html )

An interesting thought occurred to me, the other day. If human (or other) intelligence progresses past a technological singularity, and thinks it a good idea to colonize the universe, then a natural long-term plan for each star-colony is to waste as little energy as possible, so that intelligence can be preserved for as long as possible. Making maximum usage of star-power basically means that no high-energy light should be emitted out into space -- it is much better to use it for something useful and then to emit it as low-energy light (this is the idea of the Dyson Sphere), or to find some way to store it. In either case, it is wasteful for a supremely powerful intelligence to let stars simply shine.

Now, because I have to make some assumption, I'm going to assume that independently evolved technological intelligences will crop up at a rate of one per galactic supercluster over the next the next few 10^9 years (since we're entering a stage of universe development where the increasing number of sufficiently high-metalicity star systems should be making the evolution of life more and more common). Since your average galactic supercluster is something like 10^8 light-years across, one could imagine essentially the entire universe colonized by superintelligence in something like 10^10 years -- i.e. when the universe is about twice as old as it is now.

The implication is that the universe may essentially become dark at this time, due to the fact that it's illogical to waste high-energy light. I.E. a fascinating property of a universe like ours may be that for something like 99.999% of the time that stars should be shining -- they don't. Instead, you have truly massive amounts of "deep thinking" going on, for a long, long time...

The moral of the story: get your stargazing in now, while the getting is good.

[AWoodside]

Very interesting idea. Of course, an assumption you're implicitly making is that the energy required to build, set up, and maintain whatever technology you're using to capture all a star's energy is small enough relative to the star's energy that it's worth it to do so. This doesn't seem like that unbelievable of an assumption, but I'm not sure if it's clear cut.

[pokerbobo]

There is also a theory that the universe will continue to expand, finally reaching a point where it starts to contract. The contraction will be slow at first but will accelerate as gravity increases. Finally contracting to the size of the initial "big bang". No real use in conserving energy if this is the case.

[Metric]

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Very interesting idea. Of course, an assumption you're implicitly making is that the energy required to build, set up, and maintain whatever technology you're using to capture all a star's energy is small enough relative to the star's energy that it's worth it to do so. This doesn't seem like that unbelievable of an assumption, but I'm not sure if it's clear cut.

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Yes, there are several assumptions hiding under this idea. This one, I think, is probably pretty tame -- the Dyson sphere idea has already been out there for a long time (and it found its way to an episode of Star Trek, so it must be true /images/graemlins/wink.gif ).

[Metric]

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There is also a theory that the universe will continue to expand, finally reaching a point where it starts to contract. The contraction will be slow at first but will accelerate as gravity increases. Finally contracting to the size of the initial "big bang". No real use in conserving energy if this is the case.

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Yes, always possible -- but the best evidence right now points to a cosmological constant that will ensure continued expansion and eventual heat death of the universe, making long-term conservation of resources a really good idea for intelligent life.

[Piers]

The affect of intelligent life on the universe is strictly limited to localised effects by the speed limit.

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The moral of the story: get your stargazing in now, while the getting is good.

[/ QUOTE ].

I disagree. My judgment is that you have greatly underestimated the frequency of intelligent life, and overestimated the affect of intelligent life can have on the universe.

So assuming your correct about the Dysen Sphere thingy (big assumption) I can’t see more than 5% of stars disappearing.

Still I am guessing. Maybe if we a much large frequency of intelligence supporting stars, plus some form of creeping colonising over millions of years, you might be right. But I still don’t think so.

[HP]

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There is also a theory that the universe will continue to expand, finally reaching a point where it starts to contract. The contraction will be slow at first but will accelerate as gravity increases. Finally contracting to the size of the initial "big bang". No real use in conserving energy if this is the case.

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Yes, always possible -- but the best evidence right now points to a cosmological constant that will ensure continued expansion and eventual heat death of the universe, making long-term conservation of resources a really good idea for intelligent life.

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hey btw what's the latest on this? Are stars actually accelerating away from each other (last I heard), Or are stars accelerating towards each other but not enough to collapse?

[speedfreek]

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hey btw what's the latest on this? Are stars actually accelerating away from each other (last I heard), Or are stars accelerating towards each other but not enough to collapse?

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This is pretty much the most popular current cosmological theory:

The expansion of space is something that is measurable at the largest scales only, i.e. between us and the more distant galaxies. It is theorised to happen in areas with no gravity, or that the expansion is such a weak force that any gravity overcomes it.

The expansion of space is metric, which means it is the metric that defines distance that changes over time. This means that any unit of distance will change by the same factor as any other unit over a given time - in the time it takes 1 meter to expand to become what used to be 2 meters all distances double, so 1 billion ly becomes 2 billion ly. This is how distant galaxies can recede from us at apparent speeds that are faster than light.

We can only measure the expansion of space using the redshift of objects over around 5 billion light years away. This is when the redshift is dominated by cosmological redshift, where light has been actually stretched by the expansion of the space it has passed through. At closer distances, the effect of the expansion is much less (for the actual rate of expansion is extremely small) and so any redshift of a closer object is dominated by relativistic doppler effect, where the light is apparently changed by our relative speed to the object we are observing.

We think the rate of expansion is accelerating because where we have objects of a known magnitude (type 1a supernovae) that show up over large distances, we can more accurately estimate their distance using both redshift and the difference between their absolute and apparent magnitude. When we measure these supernovae, we built up a picture where the closer ones had moved away from us further than expected when compared to the more distant ones.

But stars aren't accelerating away from each other - distant galaxies are. There is no measurable effect of expansion within galaxies themselves, or between close clusters of galaxies, only in the vast empty areas between the clusters of galaxies.

And in fact, it is misleading to think of the distant galaxies as accelerating away, as that implies inertial motion. It is more accurate to say the distance between us and the distant galaxies is increasing at an accelerating rate, through no movement of ours or their own, but through the space in between us growing.

[HP]

ty speedfreek

on more Q if you don't mind:

Is it possible we could point a beam of light at a distant galaxy, and it never gets there due to the space in between expanding? Either from our frame of reference or theirs?

[Metric]

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The affect of intelligent life on the universe is strictly limited to localised effects by the speed limit.

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Not a problem for this idea -- it should not be too hard for a superintelligence to colonize a galactic supercluster on the timescale of 10^10 years, given that the average supercluster is only about 10^8 lightyears across.

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I disagree. My judgment is that you have greatly underestimated the frequency of intelligent life,

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That's because I was being conservative -- if intelligent life is more common than my assumption, then this particular effect is more likely to happen, rather than less likely.

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...and overestimated the affect of intelligent life can have on the universe.

So assuming your correct about the Dysen Sphere thingy (big assumption) I can’t see more than 5% of stars disappearing.

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So your disagreement appears to be based entirely on the assumption that almost all stars will be ignored by a colonizing superintelligence. I don't see a justification for this -- why live for X years and think Y thoughts if you could live for 2X years and/or think 2Y thoughts via clever harnessing and/or conservation of power emitted from other stars? Once you've colonized a given galaxy, why let the vast majority of available energy go directly to waste?

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Still I am guessing. Maybe if we a much large frequency of intelligence supporting stars, plus some form of creeping colonising over millions of years, you might be right. But I still don’t think so.

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If you've got some specific idea for some limiting factor in galaxy colonization, you should say what it is. If there isn't some specific limiting factor, total colonization seems almost guaranteed.

[Metric]

The "last you heard" is still the current understanding. However, there are some weird cosmological models that have us accelerating now, and collapsing later -- but these require a lot more assumptions than a simple cosmological constant which already fits the data perfectly and predicts acceleration forever.

[Borodog]

This OP is Super-Hyper-Mega-Awesome(TM) and gets my Seal of Approval.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c153/Borodog/seal_of_approval.jpg

[Metric]

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Is it possible we could point a beam of light at a distant galaxy, and it never gets there due to the space in between expanding? Either from our frame of reference or theirs?

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Yep, this sort of thing can happen. If I travel sufficiently far away from the earth (in an accelerating universe), I won't be able to get back to earth or even signal back to earth.

[Piers]

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If you've got some specific idea for some limiting factor in galaxy colonization, you should say what it is

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The speed of light. Obviously. Any colonization would have to be at a snails pace and could easily peter out. Any particularly large chunks of empty space will pose a seriously big problem. Sorry I am not buying inter galactic travel, and absolutely not inter local group travel.

While I think you have greatly underestimated the frequency of intelligent life, I suspect you might of overestimated the frequency of life forms with the enthusiasm and technical expertise for unlimited colonization, plus adhering to the Dyson sphere approach to power conservation.

Dyson sphere’s and unlimited colonization appear to be to different solutions to the, not enough resource to support the species problem. Why employ both of them?

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The implication is that the universe may essentially become dark at this time, due to the fact that it's illogical to waste high-energy light.

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Illogical??

Perhaps the problem is that you are suggesting a uniformity that need not exist. While there might well be an infinite number of galaxies that disappear because of the effect you suggest, a much larger frequency will not do so because the necessary parley of events does not occur.

[Metric]

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If you've got some specific idea for some limiting factor in galaxy colonization, you should say what it is

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The speed of light. Obviously. Any colonization would have to be at a snails pace and could easily peter out. Any particularly large chunks of empty space will pose a seriously big problem. Sorry I am not buying inter galactic travel, and absolutely not inter local group travel.

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This kind of space travel would obviously be extremely difficult and expensive for biological beings like humans, but what emerges on the other side of the singularity may be able to engineer its own intelligence to easily withstand super-long duration space travel. The intelligence wouldn't have to be a massive collection of fragile biological brains with their massive and constant life-support needs. Once an initial push to some reasonable fraction of the speed of light has been achieved (say, 10%), there would be little to stop intergalactic space travel -- almost no intelligence needs to be active during the actual trip.

After colonization begins, the power of the exponential takes over -- if every new colony in turn sends out 10 new colonizers after some allowed initial build-up time, one can see that it doesn't take long at all to colonize an entire galaxy. (incidentally, this is part of the Fermi paradox -- once galactic colonization begins, it takes over so rapidly that we should expect to find our entire galaxy already colonized if we weren't the first technological life on the scene)

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While I think you have greatly underestimated the frequency of intelligent life, I suspect you might of overestimated the frequency of life forms with the enthusiasm and technical expertise for unlimited colonization, plus adhering to the Dyson sphere approach to power conservation.

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It doesn't exactly have to be a Dyson sphere approach -- all that has to be realized is that it's tremendously wasteful let the source of your life (the stars) simply burn out when it could instead be used to prolong the duration of your intelligence.

As for the other point, I agree that it's possible that technological intelligence is (and will continue to be) more rare than my estimate. However, even if I'm off by an order of magnitude, this should not stop the post-singularity intelligences that do emerge from continuing to expand. They certainly have a lot of time available to do this -- the stars are going to burn for a very long time.

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Dyson sphere’s and unlimited colonization appear to be to different solutions to the, not enough resource to support the species problem. Why employ both of them?

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If you want your intelligence to think the maximum number of thoughts and/or maximize its duration (and this seems like a reasonable motivation), you'll use both. Wasting energy by letting stars radiate their energy directly into deep space reduces drastically what any intelligence will be able to achieve, as does limiting the number of stars you wish to colonize.

As an analogy, if a new continent full of resources were discovered on the earth, do you think nobody would go there simply because we have plenty of resources as it is?

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The implication is that the universe may essentially become dark at this time, due to the fact that it's illogical to waste high-energy light.

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Illogical??

Perhaps the problem is that you are suggesting a uniformity that need not exist. While there might well be an infinite number of galaxies that disappear because of the effect you suggest, a much larger frequency will not do so because the necessary parley of events does not occur.

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My assumption is simply that there will be a low concentration (around one per supercluster or so) of post-singularity intelligence that thinks it a good idea to maximize its duration and/or number of thoughts. It could be a bad assumption, but it seems pretty reasonable to me that some of these will indeed show up on the scene in sufficient concentration for the "black out" effect to occur.

[speedfreek]

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Is it possible we could point a beam of light at a distant galaxy, and it never gets there due to the space in between expanding? Either from our frame of reference or theirs?

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Yep, this sort of thing can happen. If I travel sufficiently far away from the earth (in an accelerating universe), I won't be able to get back to earth or even signal back to earth.

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In addition, this is already happening. We don't have to point a beam of light at distant galaxy, our galaxy is already sending light towards distant galaxies that will never reach them (i.e. they will never see our galaxy as it is now, they can only see our galaxy as it was when the apparent speed of recession between us and them was below that of light).

That is unless the hubble constant changes over time (we have some evidence this has happened in the past). Simply put, if the expansion of space ever slows down enough, our light will then be able to catch up with them again!

We have some observations that lead us to conclude that the expansion decelerated early in the history of the universe, and then started accelerating more recently. We can see over a thousand galaxies that are receding from us faster than light, but when their light was emitted the hubble constant was different, (and thus so was the hubble distance - the threshold where we cannot see objects anymore) which has allowed their light to slip into our observable universe.

[MrMon]

If the universe is roughly 10^10 years old and will last 10^17 year, that means it has lived 1/10^7 of its lifetime, or .00001%. Given that 10^10 years is a freakishly long time and is barely a blip in the life of the universe, conserving the energy of the universe should generally be considered a non-problem.

Unless you're Al Gore.

[PairTheBoard]

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If you've got some specific idea for some limiting factor in galaxy colonization, you should say what it is

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The speed of light. Obviously. Any colonization would have to be at a snails pace and could easily peter out

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How long does it take for a beam of light to travel across a galaxy?

As I understand travel at close to the speed of light. Say you travel 1000 light years at close to the speed of light. To an outside observer it will take you 1000 years to get there. Not really that long in this scheme of things. But because of time dilation, the people in the space ship travelling close to the speed of light will only age maybe 1 year. So one way colonization becomes pretty feasible. You just have to go fast enough. How long would it take you to get up to that kind of speed at 1g constant acceleration?

PairTheBoard

[Sephus]

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How long would it take you to get up to that kind of speed at 1g constant acceleration?

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8.5 hrs i think.

[PairTheBoard]

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How long would it take you to get up to that kind of speed at 1g constant acceleration?

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8.5 hrs i think.

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More like 8500 hours or just under a year if you continued to get 9.8m/sec^2 acceleration from the 1g all the way up to the 300 million meters/sec light speed. Of course you can't exactly do this because you would exceed the speed of light in a year's time. But you can come close.

Here's a link to an article on 1g Space Craft (http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/O/one-g_spacecraft.html)

At 1g you could make the round trip of 2,480,000 light years to the Andromeda Galaxy and back in just 60 years onboard ship time. Of course, 5,000,000 years would have passed on Earth. But for one way colonization it's feasible. You just need a good matter to energy propulsion system.

PairTheBoard

[Sephus]

lol i used 300,000 m/s obv.

[m_the0ry]

As exciting as the prospect of humanity spreading across the universe is, it raises a few questions mostly highlighted by Fermi's paradox. If it is possible to surmount the technological boundaries of lightyear scale spacetravel, how come we haven't encountered aliens? Wouldn't some other species be out there also seeking universal domination? It's impossible to ignore this when considering the massive number of (visible) stars that could host life.

[Borodog]

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As exciting as the prospect of humanity spreading across the universe is, it raises a few questions mostly highlighted by Fermi's paradox. If it is possible to surmount the technological boundaries of lightyear scale spacetravel, how come we haven't encountered aliens? Wouldn't some other species be out there also seeking universal domination? It's impossible to ignore this when considering the massive number of (visible) stars that could host life.

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Somebody's got to be first.

I think most people drastically over-estimate the probability of extraterrestrial intelligence, precisely because of this effect.

[Metric]

In any case we should be expected to be in the very early stages of this kind of process, but I agree that this kind of idea should be able to make some predictions. The discovery of some very distant galaxies emitting almost entirely at very low wavelengths would be a smoking gun. How low the wavelengths should be, I don't know -- it depends on how efficient the superintelligence is at converting solar energy to something useful. The ultimate lower bound on the frequency of emitted light would be set by the temperature of the cosmic background radiation -- emitting at lower wavelengths would be thermodynamically impossible. One could probably come up with much more realistic bounds as well, with some additional assumptions that haven't been posited yet...

[Borodog]

Metric,

Wouldn't very distant galaxies be too early in the lifetime of the universe to make this likely? At that epoch those galaxies should be too metal poor for the evolution of high technology civilizations.

[Metric]

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Metric,

Wouldn't very distant galaxies be too early in the lifetime of the universe to make this likely? At that epoch those galaxies should be too metal poor for the evolution of high technology civilizations.

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Very good point... I bet it would be easy to draw an effective distance limit for this -- no need to look out any farther than you could see a majority of late-generation stars that have themselves been burning for several billion years.

[malorum]

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So assuming your correct about the Dysen Sphere thingy (big assumption)

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http://www.2012.com.au/Hollow_Earth.jpg