Spudboy100@aol.com writes:
> In a message dated 10/19/1999 11:13:53 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> rhanson@gmu.edu writes:
>
> > The SciAm article also says that Steven Frautschi of Caltech
> > in 82 explored the possibility of scavenging mass to feed a
> > black hole in an expanding universe. But neither the article
> > nor the preprint cite any such paper.
>
> I have read a work called 5 Ages of the Universe, by a couple of
> astrophysicists from University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, who might dispute
> with Professor Frautschi on the continuence of computation and life over
> Petaplexes of years. The there's people like Tipler at Tulane, or Max
> Tegmark, now at Penn State, who provide their own solutions to extinction.
> We don't know enough about the cosmos to make such pronuncements, as the big
> wheels in the 19th century did in their pridefulness.
This is a dangerous meme, that we know too little to dare say anything about the remote future. Sure, these theoretical arguments are currently fairly weak, but they are based on known physics or not too unlikely possibilities. They will have to be revised over time, there is nothing wrong with that. Keeping silent while waiting for certainty is a recipe for catatonia - after all, we can't be 100% certain the sun will rise tomorrow.
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