Re: Tipler's Conjectures

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@ricochet.net)
Date: Sat May 05 2001 - 11:03:06 MDT


At 11:28 AM 5/4/01 -0700, Chris Hibbert wrote:

>Damien Broderick cited news reports to say
>> Just taking it at face value, the suggestion is that it looks as if
>> the universe will expand forever and the mass density will get
>> lower and lower, so eventually it will reach to nearly zero
>
>Just a quibble. I don't know what the consensus is on the underlying
>physics, but if the quote above is an accurate description "it looks as if
>the universe will expand forever and the mass density will get lower and
>lower", then the conclusion "eventually it will reach to nearly zero"
>doesn't follow. Remember asymptotes. The density can keep getting lower
>forever, without ever getting close to zero.
>
>Chris

At 07:54 AM 5/5/01 -0400, Greg Burch wrote:
>I've only been skimming this thread and haven't thought deeply about the
>physics of "Tipler's Conjectures" since I read the book some years ago, but
>here's a question: Yes, it seems all the empirical evidence is mounting
>against a truly cosmic-scale implementation of Tipler's design for
>infinite/eternal computation, but could his design be implemented on a
>smaller scale? In other words, just because the cosmos in toto won't
>collapse, couldn't a local region be structured for asymetrical collapse to
>achieve the same result?

The sociology of who reads whose postings gets interesting. We
need the sociogram that someone was talking about. I have no
idea what fraction of people are reading this, but it can't be
very high. Spike echoed exactly the point that I had made in
the Pascal's Wager thread, proving he doesn't read mine.

To address the question, however, I would suggest that with sufficient
matter/energy density, as occurs with collapsing black holes, it would
seem possible to me.

Lee Corbin



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