
What life could be like for civilizations 1 trillion years from now - tosh
https://phys.org/news/2018-06-tools-humanity-year-trillion.html
======
clon
Isaac Arthur made a compendium called Civilizations at the End of Time [1]
that goes into this territory. This guy, in my opinion, goes above and beyond
even your typical hard scifi. Can't recommend highly enough.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p58yFf7aZsM&list=PLIIOUpOge0...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p58yFf7aZsM&list=PLIIOUpOge0LvHsTP5fm8oxB1qPS54sTMk)

~~~
newsbinator
I just gave this a go. It's amazing, thank you for putting it on my radar.

At first his speech impediment makes it harder to follow, but 5 minutes in
you're used to it and you're just riveted by the content and the clear
communication style.

This is quality stuff.

~~~
melling
I guess it’s more fun to dream about the world millions of years in the
future, but wouldn’t we gain so much more if we spent all of our energy trying
to optimize acquiring knowing more rapidly in the next few decades?

For example, supply 9 billion humans with clean, renewable energy by 2050.
Accelerate cures for cancers, heart disease, malaria, etc. Large colony on
Mars within 20 years, ...

~~~
d0mine
It is not how science works. You can't predict what might be useful.

    
    
      1940 Hardy labels number theory (his own area of mathematics) as useless
      1977 RSA
    

You can't imagine the modern internet without cryptography.

~~~
fjsolwmv
Hardy's statement was philosophical, not a scientific prediction. Encryption
was already an important science by 1940

------
OscarCunningham
This goes together nicely with the Aestivation Hypothesis
([https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.03394](https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.03394)).

If a civilisation puts itself on hold for a trillion years, just waiting
around doing nothing, then when it wakes up the universe is much colder and it
can do computations 10^30 times more efficiently. If the civilization consists
of minds running on computers then they've increased their own lifespans by
the same factor.

~~~
phkahler
You might enjoy "The Last Question" by Issac Asimov:

[http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html](http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html)

~~~
elboru
Having the possibility to ask this question to Google Now, Siri or Alexa and
getting a real answer would be a cool Easter Egg.

~~~
_mhr_
WolframAlpha does this.

------
visarga
Here's my take on the future: We'll upload ourselves and use much less energy.
As uploaded agents we'll have all the advantages of software - forking
multiple instances of ourselves, backup for assured immortality, plugins and
upgrades, changing our appearance at will, slowing down or speeding up,
becoming part of a collective - everything. It will be Life 2.0, very
different from our life.

We've already "uploaded" parts of the brain - visual processing, voice, simple
communication and some interaction skills like playing game, moving about and
handling objects.

Our age is the first where massive storage, worldwide communication and cheap
cameras exist. So we will be an interesting case for the future uploaded
agents - we'll be revived based on our digital traces in order to study the
origins of Life 2.0 - digital archeology.

~~~
l33tbro
I'm finding it difficult to understand what you mean by 'uploading'. Do you
mean in some kind of Mixed Reality scenario where we are interacting with
virtual assets?

~~~
tim333
I think they mean this stuff
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading)

------
Eliezer
To accelerate stars, you squeeze them until a jet of matter comes out in the
opposing direction. For ideas on getting matter out of stars, see "star
lifting".

Furthermore, most of the useful energy in stars is not their nuclear binding
energy, it is their potential as gravitational fuel, for example when added
into a black hole via the Penrose process. It makes sense to accelerate stars
toward the central dwelling place of intelligent life, even if the stars have
burned out by the time they get there.

~~~
maxerickson
How silly. Saying we don't know how to move a star is exactly the same as
saying "you just squeeze it", right up until the point you actually go out
there and actually fucking squeeze it.

~~~
Eliezer
I was on mobile so didn't have the time to post a link to more than "search on
star lifting", but now that I'm off mobile, have a link.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting)

EDIT: more material directly on moving stars:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_engine)
[https://www.dynamical-
systems.org/zwicky/stellarengines.pdf](https://www.dynamical-
systems.org/zwicky/stellarengines.pdf)

~~~
maxerickson
You've also removed the part where you called those pontifications
"engineering".

edit: No, seriously, the initial comment shat on the author of the link for
not knowing anything about mega-engineering. That's what I was calling silly.

~~~
rayiner
People need to stop abusing the term “engineering.” This is dungeons and
dragons fantasy with s bit of math for color.

~~~
abecedarius
If you like, you can reserve the term "engineering" for detailed currently-
implementable designs (or for work by a licensed professional engineer, or
whatever). But that doesn't mean it's impossible or useless to explore what's
conservatively doable within the laws of physics using resources we don't yet
have.

------
_ph_
These are really mind-blowing szenarios. While they might appear as rather
theoretical in nature, as they are in such a far distant future, the most
striking part was the one of direct practical consequence: based on the
theoretical models we can now and today watch for any indication of other
civilizations preparing for the far future. And that is pretty cool, even if
we might just not see anything interesting.

------
readhn
There simply is no way to predict what life will be like in 1 trillion years.
We are still riding horses in many parts of the world, we are still killing
each other..

its like asking a caveman what the next update to windows will look like.

We simply have no capacity to think yet.

------
a3n
I think tools 1 trillion years from now that stumble across that headline will
wonder what humanity was.

~~~
some_account
> I think tools 1 trillion years from now that stumble across that headline
> will wonder what humanity was.

We will be lucky to still be here in 100 years.

~~~
practice9
We've already come this far, we probably will be here for a while longer

~~~
Paperweight
We're kind of like rats.

------
thorum
Have we ruled out the possibility that a future civilization could slow or
stop the expansion of the universe before all the stars disappear from view
forever?

~~~
duxup
For all we know expansion is their plan to eliminate the competition.

------
Malic
Kurzgesagt had some nice summaries of: 1) Why white dwarves might be the last
home for life in the universe -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsN1LglrX9s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsN1LglrX9s)
2) ...or maybe it will be black holes -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulCdoCfw-
bY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulCdoCfw-bY)

------
gaius
_all stars outside the Local Group of galaxies will no be accessible to us
since they will be receding away faster than the speed of light._

Can anyone explain what this means?

~~~
user5994461
There is a theory that the universe is expanding faster and faster. At some
point in the future, stars would be moving away faster than the speed of light
and we couldn't ever see them again or reach them.

~~~
montrose
How could they be moving faster than the speed of light?

~~~
hsk
Because while matter cannot move faster than the speed of light the universe
itself is allowed to expand faster than the speed of light. Think of the
spacetime fabric stretching so fast light cannot cover the increased distance.
The universe is essentially creating more distance between objects.

Another way to think of it is velocity of an object is derivative of position
in space over time. If space itself is moving your position relative to it
isn't changing.

~~~
chii
I still can't intuitively understand this. If two objects ar stationary
relative to each other, the expansion implies that at some point, the distance
between those two objects will increase (without either of those objects
having moved).

So space is being somehow created?! What if i have a large object, will the
length of that object increase? Or will it break up?

~~~
Findeton
I think you are using a concept of space-time that is quite limited. You are
at most using concepts from Einstein's Special Relativity. Everything changed
with _General_ Relativity.

Space is not "created", space-time is warped. Gravity is the deformation of
space-time by mass/energy. The distance from point A to point B is measured by
the time it takes for a light ray to get from A to B using the shortest path.
But if you move objects with mass (or with energy) near A and B, the shortest
path will change. Also, it's easy to measure distance in seconds when you know
the speed of light.

------
novalis78
How would this scenario change, if there was a Big Bounce? And how would we
potentially recognize alien civilizations preparing for that? And finally: in
order to find out which of the two cosmological models is actually the correct
one, we just set up SETI to find signs as to which of those two hyper-
engineering projects have been undertaken - by civilizations that are a bit
further in their cosmological understanding ;-)

------
viach
Then, there will be a post on HN about it, marked [2018 FE (First Era)].
"Ancients knew all this would happen [2018 FE]"

~~~
davnicwil
And below that, a post about how this will be the year of Linux on the
desktop?

Sorry, couldn't resist :-)

~~~
Paperweight
"What you need to know about the Windows 10 Star Squeezer's Update"

------
dmh2000
this assumes that civilizations will be able to use energy from sources other
then their own star (or galaxy) or that it will be possible to get a
significant number of their individuals to other stars. unlikely. just hang on
until your own star dies then its over.

------
tomrod
By this time in the future I hope we have worked out wormholes.

~~~
akvadrako
Highly unlikely. Unless wormholes are setup with strange restrictive
configurations they allow sending messages back in time, without needing any
new physics.

Once you have a wormhole, if you use gravity to accelerate one of the ends
away then bring it back near the other end, they will have a time difference,
due to general relativity. If you bring them close enough, that time
difference will be greater than it takes to travel between them in normal
space, allowing you to travel to your own past.

This video gives a quick explanation of the problem:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUqxzH0652w&t=186s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUqxzH0652w&t=186s)

~~~
erikpukinskis
Doesn’t that just put bounds on which wormholes are possible, rather than
proving no wormhole is possible?

~~~
akvadrako
It doesn't prove they are impossible, but what it shows is if they are
possible, the universe is conspiratorial. Because it restricts your free will
so you don't create time travel paradoxes.

------
ganzuul
Something wrong with that site. Crashed my browser.

------
gigatexal
What a fascinating read. Thanks for posting this.

------
oooooof
Errr. I think by 2400 we’ve got every chance of living in the ruins of a past
grand human civilization.

Trillion is nice sci fi. 10,000 years in the future with any recognizable
civilization is even more of a stretch.

~~~
ekianjo
Thats a pretty pessimistic view to have when we live in an era of ongoing
progress in almost every area.

~~~
crabmusket
A pessimistic or at least skeptical dialectic counterpart to the
optimistic/progressive worldview is a valuable thing to have, I think.

You can't reach into people's brains and change their temperament (yet! say
the optimists) but I don't think we should want to. And not
allpessimism/skepticism is based on temperament, though certainly some is.

------
phkahler
I started reading this and then thought "what a waste of time". This pertains
in no way to my life or the life of anyone for the foreseeable future. I read
it just after the one about taking pictures preventing people from
experiencing things and remembering them. Putting these together reminded me
that reading some of these things on HN is preventing me from living. And with
that, I'm gonna close this laptop and go do something rather than worry what
people a trillion years hence will be doing.

~~~
dwaltrip
The people who actually take humanity to the stars (if it happens) will likely
be motivated, in part at least, by this and other grand, cosmic ideas. I
personally find it motivating and invigorating in a certain sense.

But, of course, if it is bumming you out, then definitely go do something else
:)

~~~
phkahler
Oh, I agree with you. SpaceX is awesome and I'm excited about the idea of
colonizing Mars. The difference is that Mars is attainable now. Lots of
unknowns but it's within reach.

------
Ensorceled
There is a lot of weird downvoting in these threads, can anybody explain what
is going on?

~~~
sctb
I'm not sure what you're referring to, but could you please email
hn@ycombinator.com with details so we can take a look instead of posting a
meta comment?

~~~
Ensorceled
It was curiosity. Essentially what looks to be reasonable comments are being
downvoted, not sure if there is anything nefarious.

------
ck2
I wish I could still see people and nations with the optimism of youth.

But now I am going to point out that someone will probably weaponize fusion
and that will be the end of that.

We're not making it off this planet as a civilization, and honestly that may
be for the best.

(but I still think The Expanse may be the best show since Babylon 5)

~~~
sethrin
Are you not familiar with the hydrogen bomb, or are you speculating about
unphysical weapons?

------
yogeshp
I think the movie Interstellar closely depicts how life on Earth may turn out.
Climate change is never going to stop, humans except few just don't care.
Instead they will try to create more machines which will try to use carbon
engineering to reduce CO2(as one discussed few days back on HN). With less
need for trees and more need to fulfill population demand, if this technology
becomes successful, it can be a doomsday scenario for trees and land
everywhere will slowly start to erode resulting in greater imbalance in the
ecosystem and eventually worldwide famines. Add to that, thawning of
permafrost will release large amount of methane along with bacteria which were
inactive since ages and for which humans may have no cure.

Most of CO2 is absorbed by oceans, and humans may never be able to find a way
to tame CO2 there, this will result in much faster melting of ice in Arctic
and Antarctica than anticipated.

No, humans aren't going to find an alternative habitable planet anytime soon
where they can travel.

~~~
martincmartin
In the '70s, movies like Soylent Green depicted how people thought Earth may
turn out: more and more people supported by limited resources, food riots,
etc. e.g. China introduced the one child policy to head this off.

In the '80s, movies like War Games and The Day After depicted how people
thought Earth may turn out: nuclear war triggered through Mutually Assured
Destruction. (Source: I lived through the '80s.)

you get the idea.

------
BrandoElFollito
This is a good contender for the next Ig Noble prize.

My knee reaction with such articles is "I am glad that the guy is not payed
with my taxes" but then I wonder how many of such useless papers where
actually trampolines for useful ones (by bootstrapping ideas, suggesting "some
uses of vibranium which, in that specific case could be replaced with
titanium", etc.).

This extends to topics like astrophysics of galaxies far away (which we will
not reach within 7000 years), particle physics (which work at energies which
cannot be replicated outside of the lab), ... I am well aware that things
which happen around these topics (say, the need to better understand magnetism
in accelerators which can lead to better tomography or something) but are
these money pits really needed as catalyzers?

