Extending the Life of a Universal Culture

[Holo]

The lifespan of a universal civilisation is around 100 trillion years, due to the limited lifespan of stars. How would you extend this?

EDIT: Turns out I underestimated the length of the Stelliferous Era. Thanks!

Edited December 2, 2013 by Holo

[rpayne88]

Colonize another star.

[Holo]

Colonize another star.

What part of Universal is difficult to understand? There are no more stars, they've all been colonised.

Even if there were more stars, Isaac Asimov rebuts your idea well:

Then Lupov's eyes snapped open. "You're thinking we'll switch to another sun when ours is done, aren't you?"

"I'm not thinking."

"Sure you are. You're weak on logic, that's the trouble with you. You're like the guy in the story who was caught in a sudden shower and who ran to a grove of trees and got under one. He wasn't worried, you see, because he figured when one tree got wet through, he would just get under another one."

"I get it," said Adell. "Don't shout. When the sun is done, the other stars will be gone, too."

[Monkeh]

Mine black holes. Easy

[pxi]

Well if we're going to invoke Asimov, how about bulldozing old stars together?

[Ralathon]

We build a universal computer that exists in hyperspace. It will gather data until the universe is nothing but ash and then spend an eternity to figure out the answer.

But seriously, we have no idea right now. We don't even understand how the universe was created or what drives the expansion of the universe. So there could be a myriad of ways to produce energy without stars.

Methods that I can think up right now:

Initiate the fusion ourselves: skip the stars, just gather hydrogen and start fusing. There should be plenty of hydrogen left, even after the stars have died.

Gather Hawking radiation: Black holes radiate energy inversely proportional to their mass. If you have a very small black hole it'll radiate a lot of energy. You can sustain it by force feeding it mass. You can convert a significant fraction of that mass into energy that way.

Orbit ever closer to the event horizon of a huge black hole within a reflective dyson sphere (To prevent evaporation). Time dilation will slow down time from your perspective. This means that you'll use less energy per time unit from the PoV of the rest of the universe. As long as you approach infinite time dilation faster than the universe approaches 0K you'll be fine.

But really, we don't know enough about the universe to even predict what'll happen in a few billion years. Let alone it's ultimate fate. If something like the Big Rip happens there isn't much we can do about it with our current knowledge...

[ZedNova]

I would say invent some sort of time bubble, time pass normally on the inside but passed much slower on the out. Although this seems about as do-able as a Stargate..

[andrewas]

Red dwarfs live far longer than other stars. A 0.1 solar mass red dwarf has an estimated lifespan of 10 trillion years.

If a civilisation actually manages star formation rather than letting them form naturally, they could allow only small red dwarfs to form and only as they were needed, which would allow them to put of the inevitable for a ridiculously long time. But the end is still inevitable. Either we go into a big crunch, or we go into a big rip or we go into heat death.

[Ravenchant]

...around 100 billion years, due to the limited lifespan of stars.

Minor typo: star formation should cease around the 100 trillion years mark. Not that three orders of magnitude make any real difference at such scales, but still...

[Scotius]

Why not create an artificial, young Universe in a lab? Wait a while until galaxies, stars and planets form inside - and then open a wormhole and migrate there en masse. Rinse and repeat until you get sufficiently bored

[Nibb31]

What makes you think that a single "civilization" could live billions of years. We don't know of a single complex organism that could live that long without evolution turning it into something completely different? Civilizations would rise and fall and go extinct in much less than the pace at which a single species would evolve into something completely unrecognizable from its original state.

In other words, if our descendants still exist in a million years, they will be so physically, socially, culturally, and genetically different from us to be unrecognizable, and the introductions of any major physical, social, cultural and genetical differences are bound to cause enough instability to bring down or deconstruct most forms of civilization as we know it.

[dharak1]

It would take more than a million years to make us unrecognizable. If we were in a different star system and it wasn't us looking at the future thing then MAYBE we wouldn't be traceable. Look at monkeys. There is quite a resemblance.

[ecat]

The lifespan of a universal civilisation is around 100 billion trillion years, due to the limited lifespan of stars. How would you extend this?

Easy:

Ban smoking, drinking, high fat and high sugar foods, ban non-procreative copulation (I cannot believe the common 3 letter term for copulation and also gender is censored here!) Ban every activity that they consider counter productive (by their definition of productive of course) and can see no point in even though it brings pleasure to many.

"And will this extend the lifetime of our universal culture beyond 100 trillion years?"

Probably not but it will certainly make our time feel a lot longer.

Why not create an artificial, young Universe in a lab? Wait a while until galaxies, stars and planets form inside - and then open a wormhole and migrate there en masse. Rinse and repeat until you get sufficiently bored

Been done before

[Nibb31]

It would take more than a million years to make us unrecognizable. If we were in a different star system and it wasn't us looking at the future thing then MAYBE we wouldn't be traceable. Look at monkeys. There is quite a resemblance.

I didn't say that our descendance wouldn't be tracable genetically. I said that they would be physically unrecognizable as today's humans. Look at humans from only 50000 years ago. Even in that short period, there have been many physiological changes. They were noticeably smaller than us, their teeth and digestive systems were different, their cognitive capabilities were different, and they lived shorter lives. But mostly their culture, beliefs, and social organization would appear completely alien to us and incompatible with modern society. And that is my point. Those fundamental changes happened in a tiny timeframe when compared to the OP's "hundred billion years". I doubt that any kind of organized society (or "civlization", but I hate that term) could survive those massive mutations as a recognizable entity for more than a few thousand years.

Edited December 2, 2013 by Nibb31

[Tommygun]

I personally imagine any species that could survive even millions of years of advanced technology would have almost "magical god like" technologies, at least from our perspective.

If they had machines that could create mater and energy endlessly, would it matter what was going on outside. They could just make solar systems as they needed them or create a bridge to a younger universe in the greater multiverse.

[Xeldrak]

Well, when we are galactic civilized we should have some fancy tech. Why no take matter and turn it directly into energy to keep us warm? All these dead stars should contain much more energy, stored as matter, than they ever radiated during their lifetimes. This shouldwork for a couple of years

[LLlAMnYP]

Oh, good one! Well, as long as the entropy of the universe has room to increase, everything's cool. This has been pictured in this awesome video:

[Monkeh]

People saying we'll evolve into unrecognizable forms need to realise you need natural selection to evolve. The human species is no longer naturally selected, at least not In the Western world. People with massive genetic abnormalities, doomed to a short, horrible existence 50,000 years ago happily pro-create these days. Nothing is killing our babies or adults in high enough proportions to create selection and therefore evolution.

Once we get permanent colonies elsewhere in the solar system the environments may cause adaptations to arise, but again, true evolution may be completely impossible unless we find a new threat to our superiority and we start to lose significant numbers of individuals.

Of course gene manipulation can't really be considered evolution as such but could well produce vastly differing individuals. Prehensile tail for your baby madam, will really help getting around that zero g holiday home you have!

[Nibb31]

People saying we'll evolve into unrecognizable forms need to realise you need natural selection to evolve. The human species is no longer naturally selected, at least not In the Western world. People with massive genetic abnormalities, doomed to a short, horrible existence 50,000 years ago happily pro-create these days. Nothing is killing our babies or adults in high enough proportions to create selection and therefore evolution.

It might not be natural selection, but of course there is still selection. People with massive abnormalities often have trouble finding a partner who is willing to procreate with them. Attractiveness plays a larger role in determining whether an individual procreates or not. Different traits are being selected than just survivability. We don't really know where we are going with this, and maybe the genetical changes due to evolution will actually slow down, but they won't stop and neither will cultural or societal changes. We have wildly different lives and societies than our ancestors from just 500 years ago.

[Monkeh]

Of course we do. Is our genome different as well though? Don't get confused between evolution and adaptation. People who have black skin are quite different to those that have white skin. Adaptation, not evolution.

Our technology evolves for us now. Lack of procreation due to attractiveness or abnormality is never going to be in big enough numbers to matter. I mean, there's always someone as ugly as you and as desperate, you just got to find them.

By 'you', I wish to point out this isn't a personal attack as we all know you actually are one of the ugliest people on the planet so we don't need to mention it...

[Holo]

Well, when we are galactic civilized we should have some fancy tech. Why no take matter and turn it directly into energy to keep us warm? All these dead stars should contain much more energy, stored as matter, than they ever radiated during their lifetimes. This shouldwork for a couple of years

I decided to run the numbers of this:

• Energy released by star = E26 Watts (luminosity of star) × E10 Years (lifespan of star) ~ 3E43 Joules
  
• Mass energy of star = 2E30 Kilograms (mass of sun) × c² (from E=MC²) ~ 2E47 Joules
  

Therefore, turning stars directly into energy is more efficient than letting fusion occur by a factor of 10,000. This could extent the lifespan of a civilisation from 100 trillion years to a quintillion years.

[LLlAMnYP]

There is no straightforward way to convert arbitrary objects into energy.

[Holo]

There is no straightforward way to convert arbitrary objects into energy.

Antimatter works, if you find enough of it. You only need a 0.01% conversion rate, so feeding it to a black hole and collecting the radiation might also work.

[LLlAMnYP]

Sure it does. But a matching matter-antimatter pair isn't exactly an "arbitrary object". Also, the observable universe does not seem to contain too much antimatter either.

[TheGatesofLogic]

well, if we haven't discovered how to induce a collapsar into relativistic rotation in order to induce closed-timelike curves then we really can't postpone heat-death more than a couple of billion, maybe at most a trillion, years.