Will it be possible for intelligent life to survive the heat

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Will it be possible for intelligent life to survive the heat death of the universe?

No.

We gotta couple billion years before we have to worry about it.

Trillions of years. Not a couple billion.

"Heat Death" means that all of the energy everywhere in the universe will be at equilibrium within a few degrees of absolute zero. This means that there would be no temperature differential anywhere, and a temperature differential is required to do work. It also means that everything - including "intelligent life" - will be frozen solid.

Barring the invention of some new super-gee-whiz method of extracting energy from nothing, but that would itself violate the laws of thermodynamics from which "Heat Death" is predicted.

No. When thermodynamic equilibrium is reached no more work can be derived from the energy in the cosmos. It is all spread out, thinned out and diluted beyond usefulness.

ruveyn

Mature wisdom trumps youthful fantasy.

Again.

No information can be transmitted when the temperature is close to absolute zero. Maybe there are many universes out there (but it's not really important, as we'll never be able to enter one or survive in different physical laws), but one can safely assume that the heat death is essentially the end.

Nobody can fathom what kind of technology an intelligence a billion or trillion years more advanced could be capable of. An intelligence like that could create and control entire universes with ease.

We don't know what the future holds, this is true; but we can extrapolate from known universal principles. Doing so brings us to the inescapable conclusion that the universe will eventually be nothing more than an infinite haze of sub-atomic particles once all matter has decayed, including black holes.

Imaginary super-science is the stuff of comic books and cartoons.

So were things like space travel and nearly every other kind of modern technology.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. "

And I don't think anyone knows for sure what the particular ultimate fate of the universe will be.

... which are all extrapolations of known universal principles.

Maybe with a decent character-driven plot, you could put your speculations on the Syfy channel.

Which reminds me of a story. A student attending an astro-physics class heard from the lecturer that the Sun would become a red giant in 5 billion years and vaporize the Earth. He was so upset he called up the professor in the middle of the night and he asked the professor how long it would before the End. The professor said 5 billion years. The student said: Oh thank god! I thought you said 5 million years!

ruveyn

I can be pretty damned sure that there will be no civilization with the capability to type a cheat code into reality.


I would also point out that any civilization is highly unlikely to survive long enough to develop that kind of intelligence, let alone use that intelligence to break reality.

We can speculate that perhaps future non-biological cognitive entities might escape from the domain of the observed universe into another, quite different entity.

While, like all of the various "multiverse" theories there is not a shred of evidence for this, it is at least consistent with an extrapolation of the well-evidenced evolutionary continuum that can be traced back at least as far as the formation of the chemical elements in stars and supernovae. And that extends right through to the autonomous evolution of technology within the collective imagination of our species. And points to the emergence of a new cognitive "life-form" autonomously emerging from what at present we call the Internet.

This broad evolutionary model is outlied, very informally, in "The Goldilocks Effect: What Has Serendipity Ever Done For Us?" , a free download in e-book formats from the "Unusual Perspectives" website

challenge accepted





On a side note, do you have any idea how many pictures there are online of smug looking people in lab coats? Seriously, do an image search for "lab coat arms crossed." It's insane.