I recall Dyson saying in an interview (in OMNI?) that the ultimate
constituents of an open universe with proton decay might be positron-electron
pairs orbiting common centres of gravity. In that case, the basic
processing operations might consist of breaking apart such pairs (through
gravitational perturbation?) or causing them to form (through
gravitational attraction).
> Another thing I would like to hear opinions on: can a part of spacetime
> be collapsed into something like a closed universe (i.e. not a black hole
> singularity)?
Vic Stenger (http://www.phys.hawaii.edu/vjs/www/vjs.html) once said on
the omega-point-theory list that he couldn't see why this wouldn't be
possible. There might be something about this in Hawking and Ellis's
_Large-scale structure of space-time_.
-mitch
http://www.thehub.com.au/~mitch