
The Melancholy of Infinite Space (1996) - monort
http://www.geoffreylandis.com/infinite.htp
======
JoeDaDude
Geoffrey Landis , the writer of the subject article, may be known to some HN
readers as a science fiction author. One of his SF stories, and one of my
favorites in recent times, is available for free on the web. See "The Long
Chase", available here:

[http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-long-
chase/](http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-long-chase/)

~~~
sudoscript
Wow. I just stayed up late to read that. Completely worth it.

What else has he written?

~~~
JoeDaDude
His first novel is Mars Landing (I have not read it myself). He lists his SF
bibliography on his website [1]. It consists mostly of short stories which
appeared in various magazines, but a couple of stories are available free on
the web [2], [3].

[1]
[http://www.geoffreylandis.com/G_Bibliography.html](http://www.geoffreylandis.com/G_Bibliography.html)

[2]
[http://www.geoffreylandis.com/time_prime.htp](http://www.geoffreylandis.com/time_prime.htp)

[3]
[http://www.geoffreylandis.com/interlude.htp](http://www.geoffreylandis.com/interlude.htp)

------
api
"The Earth has no memory for the dead-ends of evolution. In a few hundred
thousand years glaciers would grind our works and our bones into gravel, would
grind the gravel into sand, and in a few hundred million years the movement of
continents erase the last of any trace of our brief existence, save perhaps
for a handful of deeply-buried and enigmatic fossils."

This brings up a question I have often wondered about: do we really know we
are the first intelligent conceptual life to do things like use tools and
language on this planet?

If let's say a dinosaur reached the level of stone or bronze age civilization
would anything be left other than... well... a couple enigmatic fossils that
are easy to dismiss?

I doubt a massive high tech civilization like ours could come and go and leave
no trace, but what about something much smaller scale?

~~~
rbanffy
We can be sure dinosaurs didn't have nukes and rockets, at least.

You are probably right about a Bronze Age civilization not leaving much that
would survive a couple million years. 50 million years is a very long time. In
not much more time than that, Hawaii will be part of Japan.

~~~
rpgmaker
> 50 million years is a very long time. In not much more time than that,
> Hawaii will be part of Japan.

And in another 50 million Japan will be part of China! Isn't it easy to make
stuff up?

~~~
rbanffy
I am not making up the movement of the Pacific tectonic plate.

------
warrenpj
If the amount of computation that can be done is finite, then subjective time
is also finite. (And vice-versa if the amount of computation is infinite.)

What does infinite time mean in a universe where nothing happens?

I hope I live to see a grand unified theory of physics which explains how
space-time emerges from the quantum scale, but also how consciousness emerges
from computation. Maybe in the future, when these theories are developed, we
can have infinite consciousness, infinite subjective time.

I also acknowledge that I may be confused entirely and the previous paragraph
has no meaning.

~~~
goldenkey
We fall into some precarious befuddlement when we start thinking about
computation and our universe.

Is our universe an analog one or a digital one? (Or a mix where space is
discrete but time isnt, etc, see plancks constant..)

Now, if our universe is analog. But powered by a digital conputer. The only
way to simulate analog is by using an extra dimension....time. in fact, one
possible hypothesis for quantum waveform collapse is that since are affecting
an analog, the pertubation is infinitely hard to compute, so just nip it in
the bud and return a digital value.

Anyho..think about that for a while.. :-)

------
btilly
Please note that this was written before it was discovered that the expansion
of the universe is accelerating. Now that that is known, it is possible that
things could end much, much more quickly as that expansion accelerates to the
point that galaxies, stars, and eventually atoms are ripped apart.

See [http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2015/06/new-model-of-cosmic-
stick...](http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2015/06/new-model-of-cosmic-stickiness-
favors-%E2%80%9Cbig-rip%E2%80%9D-demise-of-universe/) for more.

~~~
raattgift
Nah, the second derivative of the scale factor in the second Friedmann
equation
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedmann_equations?oldformat=...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedmann_equations?oldformat=true#Equations))
is still determined by energy-density (rho) and pressure (p). "p", pressure,
is equal to w \rho c^2, where w is a small negative number close to 0 (about
-1/3 is a good fit for observation).

Galaxies stars and atoms won't be ripped apart; instead you'll get these and
structures mostly collapsing into supermassive black holes which occupy their
own Hubble volumes (stray ejected stars and gas molecules will also eventually
occupy their own Hubble volumes too); the difference is in the features of the
cosmological horizon as observed by someone at a large distance from such a
black hole and stationary with respect to it. The different horizon recession
from the accelerating expansion vs the previous non-accelerating expansion
produces a different (higher) temperature in the thermal bath from the
cosmological horizon, and has implications for the ultimate fate of these
future supermassive (and very cold) black holes.

The paper your link points to is at
[http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.4918](http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.4918) and at
equation (13) recovers p = wc^2\rho above (note that they set c to unity
deliberately, which is common in physical cosmology) and on the next page they
discuss their solutions for w = -1 and w = -2/3, both of which are far from
the evidence we have for the density/pressure conversion constant and are only
further from zero because their viscous fluid model requires that (unlike the
perfect fluid in the Friedman-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker model of the standard
cosmology).

(Their motivation is to unify the dark sector by reducing it to dark matter
with bulk viscosity, on the logic that bulk viscosity implies negative
pressure. This has been tried by others before and since, and usually results
in inconsistencies that their paper hopes to avoid. The standard cosmology
keeps dark matter and dark energy separate, with dark matter likely having
positive pressure and it definitely dilutes away with the expansion of the
universe like other matter and radiation, while dark energy is a small
negative pressure everywhere that does not dilute away with the expansion of
the universe.)

------
adrianratnapala
A very good piece.

But it reminds me of an irony of science communication. Landis is right that
"Life is not made of protoplasm" but it is nonetheless true that modern
science has found the _Élan vital_ (vital impetus) that naturalistic writers
often claim doesn't exist.

That impetus is free energy -- what Schrödinger called "negative entropy". The
melancholy is that life is not _made of_ the _Élan vital_ , but consumes it.
And it seems there is only a finite amount.

~~~
rpgmaker
> _but it is nonetheless true that modern science has found the Élan vital
> (vital impetus) that naturalistic writers often claim doesn 't exist._

Source?

------
00098345
It is interesting that Mr. Landis mentions entropy (in Thermodynamical sense I
hope). I have always wondered what it means here, in this solar system.
Assuming the solar system has negligible energy flowing in, what does it mean
when life on earth is reducing entropy in this system? We are tipping the
balance by assimilating atoms in a more orderly fashion with each birth. This
means something bad is happening somewhere close-by. ;-(

~~~
Retra
What 'balance' are we tipping? There is no balance. Entropy increases globally
_over time_. You do not cause bad things to happen by locally decreasing
entropy _temporarily_. You might interpret this as indicating that life is
meaningless over cosmic time scales, but it doesn't mean something 'bad' is
happening anywhere.

Our star is slowly dying, and we feed on its remains. Our feeding is not the
cause of its death, however. It will die anyway.

------
amelius
My intuition says that if life was possible in the infinite tail of time that
has yet to come, then the probability of finding ourselves in a period close
to the beginning of the universe would be zero. But then again, we are dealing
with infinity here, so intuition is probably wrong.

~~~
goldenkey
Intuition cannot possibly work in this situation. What is the probability that
an observer can observe? 100%. What is the probability that the observer is in
the early universe? 100% (all other time sections are inhospitable.)

------
brooklyndude
Its always so awesome when people think so far out. I'm still trying to get of
bed. His web site is so retro, it's just cool x 10. :-)

