ThePhysics of Immortality

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From: John Clark <jonkc@worldnet.att.net> To: extropians@extropy.com <extropians@extropy.com>

Hara Ra <harara@shamanics.com> On Sunday, August 23, 1998

>Would someone briefly summarize Tipler's argument here?

>the local library doesn't carry The Physics of Immortality
>and I don't want to buy the book to find out.

I sent this to the list in March of 1996

I just finished reading Frank Tipler's book "The Physics of immortality" today. I had put off reading it for long time because I didn't think it would be any good, I was wrong it's quite good, but I wish he had spent less time trying to justify existing religious beliefs.

Tipler thinks that the universe will be able to perform an infinite number of calculations between now and the final singularity at the end of the Big Crunch. With this much computer power it would be easy to emulate every human being who ever lived and do it for an infinitely long subjective time. I have never taken the idea of an infinite mind very seriously, and I'm not sure I do yet but one thing I am sure of is that Tipler's critics were being unfair when they labeled it Pseudo Science. His ideas might be completely wrong but they are not silly because it's possible to prove it wrong. Tipler's Omega Point Theory makes a bunch of predictions, practical predictions that should be able to be tested for in the next 4 or 5 years. Tipler himself states that every one of these predictions must turn out to be correct or the entire theory is dead in the water.

• Tipler predicts that the universe is closed: I think most would say it's probably open, Tipler say's they're wrong.
• Tipler wrote his book in early 1992 and predicted that the mass of the Top Quark would be 185 +- 20 GeV: At the time there was a report that it was at 135 GeV, Tipler said this must be in error and it turned out he was right. In March 1995 Fermi Lab found the Top Quark at 180 +- 13 GeV.
• Tipler predicts that the Higgs boson must be at 220 +- 20 GeV: If he's correct then when the CERN Large Hadron Collider goes on line in 1999 it will find it almost immediately.

*Tipler predicts that the temperature fluctuations of the cosmic background black body radiation must be less than 6 * 10^-5: This prediction looks good, the observed value is around 5 * 10^-6.

• Tipler predicts that the Hubble constant must be less than or equal to 45: 30 years ago most thought it was about 200, a year ago most thought it was 85, today people are talking about 55.
• Tipler predicts that at maximum extent just before it starts to contract the universe must be 70^3 times larger than it is now or larger: This depends on the density of the universe so we'll have to clear up all the confusion over "Dark Matter" before we can tell how well he's doing on this one.

Tipler makes some other predictions that he doesn't know how to test for but there is no reason to think that it would be impossible
for anyone to figure out a way.

• Tipler predicts that the contraction of the universe will not be symmetrical.
• Tipler predicts that the entire universe is a past light cone: This means that if you send out a beam of light eventually it will circle the entire universe and come back and hit you in the back of the head, the time it takes to this depends on the size of the universe. Tipler says light will be able to make an infinite number of such trips before the universe collapses into a singularity.
• Tipler predicts that both density and energy will diverge to infinity during the big crunch but the density must not diverge faster than the cube of the energy.

I was really surprised that this outrageous philosophical theory was a Scientific theory too and could have so many testable consequences.

John K Clark jonkc@att.net

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