cosmologists

"[T]o really test the Theory, we will need the upgrade and either the SSC—the Texas Supercollider—or the European LHC. ...[P]erhaps it would be worth several billion dollars to establish that God exists, and that one day we will all be resurrected to live forever with Him/Her."

"ouch—what a disappointment! Nothing prepared me for just how B-A-D it is."

"I don't have any trouble... imagining nanotechnology, von Neumann probes, AI exceeding human intelligence within 50 years, or the biosphere expanding to fill... the universe. But none of that is new, and Tipler tells it less clearly than others..."

"[U]nless I'm missing something, the wheels fall off Starship Eternity."

"Ok, the visible universe has around 1080 particles in it. The universe at Tipler's point of maximum expansion is, say, 10,000 times bigger... But... we're not using mere matter to store bits anymore. We're using (drumroll) the Higgs field... And when will this happen? ..."between 10−1010 and 10−10123 seconds before the Omega Point is reached". Whew, saved by the Gong of Doom."

"And how are we going to use the Higgs field to compute, organise information systems out of free quarks and pure energy... the Boundary Condition Postulate... that says that on Easter Day, 2001, Jesus Christ will return, raise the dead, etc. ...inevitable."

"Tipler's Taub universe event horizon can opener makes the black hole horizon go away. What about the singularity? ...[Y]ou now have a very large number of naked singularities... converging toward the Omega Point, which should make things even more interesting for the universal brain emerging there."

"Suppose there were a computer... which could run a completely faithful simulation of me—even a simulation at the quantum level so good the Pauli Exclusion Principle wouldn't let us in the same room. Would it be me? Would my consciousness somehow be shared..."

"The review in Nature called POI a "masterpiece of pseudoscience". ...I don't think it's that good."

"The mechanics of 'steering' the universe to the omega point require actions to be taken throughout space. ...[I]ntelligences will have to spread all over the universe in time to make the first necessary adjustments. This is one of a series of deadlines that Tipler has shown that we would have to meet—and he has shown that meeting... them is, to the best of our... knowledge, physically possible."

"Tipler makes... additional assumptions—some plausible, others less so—which enable him to fill in more details of future history. ...[His] quasi-religious interpretation... and his failure to distinguish that... from the underlying scientific theory, that have prevented the latter from being taken seriously."

"Tipler notes that an infinite amount of knowledge will have been created by the time of the omega point. He... assumes... the [far future] intelligences will, like us, want (or... need)... knowledge other than... necessary for... survival. ...[T]hey have the potential to discover all [physically knowable] knowledge, and Tipler assumes that they will do so. So in a sense, the omega point will be omniscient."

"[T]he probability of the evolution of creatures with the technological capability of interstellar communication within five billion years after the development of life on an Earth-like planet is less than 10-10, and thus we are the only intelligent species now existing in this Galaxy."

"The basic idea... is straightforward and... has led other authors, such as Fermi... Dyson... Hart... Simpson... and Kuiper & Morris... to conclude that extraterrestrial beings do not exist: if they did exist and possessed the technology for interstellar communication, they would also have developed interstellar travel and thus would already be present in our solar system."

"[A]n intelligent species with the technology for interstellar communication would necessarily develop the technology for interstellar travel, and this would automatically lead to the exploration and/or colonization of the Galaxy in less than 300 million years."

"I shall provide a physical foundation for eschatology—the study of the ultimate future—by making the physical assumption that the universe must be capable of sustaining life indefinitely... for infinite time... [W]e have to have some theory for the future of the physical universe—since it unquestionably exists— and this is the most beautiful postulate: that total death is not inevitable. All other theories of the future necessarily postulate the ultimate extinction of everything... there is nothing uglier than extermination. We physicists know that a beautiful postulate is more likely to be correct than an ugly one. Why not adopt the Postulate of Eternal Life, at least as a working hypothesis?"

"The problem with the Drake equation is that only f_p—and to a lesser degree n_e— is subject to experimental determination... [O]ne must have a fairly large sample; for f_l, f_i, and f_c we have only... the Earth. However, if... any intelligent species... will begin... galactic exploration within 100 years after developing... interstellar communication... the sample size is enlarged... Since f_p—and n_e can... be determined by direct astrophysical measurement, the fact that extraterrestrial intelligent beings are not present in our solar system permits us to obtain a direct astrophysical measurement of an upper bound to... f_lf_if_c, which depends only on biological and sociological factors."

"Paul Dirac was the first physicist to argue for the Postulate of Eternal Life: "With my assumption... life need never end. There is no decisive argument for dediding between [certain] assumptions. I prefer the one that allows the possibility of endless life. One may hope that some day the question will be decided by direct observation."

"As ves is of the same order as the stellar random motion velocities, very sensitive guidance would be required... not... an insuperable problem with the assumed level of computer technology."

"[T]he eternal life assumption... implies... there must exist in this future (but in two precise mathematical senses, also in the present and the past) a Person Who is simultaneously transcendent to yet immanent in the physical universe of space, time, and matter. In the Person's immanent temporal aspect... changing (forever growing in knowledge and power), but in the... transcendent eternal aspect, forever complete and unchanging. How this comes about as a matter of physics will be described..."

"[I]s the God (...Person ...) the God? ...the uncreated Creator of the ...universe ...Who exists necessarily ... i.e., the Person's nonexistence would be a logical contradiction."

"[I]nclusion of the whole past, present, and future universal history in the Omega Point is more than a mere mathematical artifact. ...[T]he Omega Point "experiences" the whole of universal history "all at once.""

"[W]e cannot "see" a person who lived a few centuries before, because the light rays... have... left the solar system. Conversely, we cannot "see" the Andromeda galaxy as it now is, but... as it was 2 million years ago. So we experience as "simultaneous" the events on the boundary of our past ... But all timelike and lightlike curves converge upon the Omega Point. ...[L]ight rays from all people who died... from all... people now... from all [future] people... intersect there. The light rays... from people... are not lost forever... [T]hese rays will be intercepted and intercepted again, by the living beings who... engulfed the physical universe near the Omega Point. All the information which can be extracted from those rays will be extracted at the instant of the Omega Point."

"[I]t seems likely that a species engaging in interstellar communication would possess a fairly sophisticated computer technology. ...Sagan has asserted that 'Communication with extraterrestrial intelligence... will require... computer actuated machines with abilities approaching... intelligence'."

"[T]he information to manufacture a human being is contained in the genes of a single human cell. Thus if an extraterrestrial intelligent species possessed the knowledge to synthesize a living cell—and... experts assert... the human race could develop such knowledge within 30 years—they could program a von Neumann machine to synthesize a fertilized egg cell of their species. If they possessed artificial womb technology—and such... is in the beginning stages... on Earth... they could... synthesize members of their species... As suggested by Eiseley... these beings could be raised... by the robots... free to develop their own civilization..."

"The Physics of Christianity... received... bad reviews from very smart people like John Walker."

"The Omega Point Theory suggests that the particle physics Standard Model (SM) is sufficient to explain both [dark matter and dark energy]: the Dark Energy is just the currently uncancelled part of the positive cosmological constant, and the Dark Matter is just the Standard Model SU(2)_{left} field, coupled to the SM Higgs field. I was very worried when I wrote PHYSICS OF IMMORTALTIY that the entropy in the CMBR would make an acceleration in the collapsing phase of universal history impossible. I propose to solve this problem by claiming the temperature of the CMBR — currently "measured"... 2.2726 degrees — is actually... ! I show in a paper I put on the lanl data base (xxx.lanl.gov) last November that such an apparently ridiculous claim is possible, because any quantized gauge field in a homogeneous and isotropic universe would NECESSARILY have a Planckian spectrum, even at zero temperature! What the measurements of CMBR showing that it is Planckian... are really measuring... not the temperature, but the size of the universe. In my paper, I show how to convert the... "temperature" of 2.2726 into the size of the universe."

"[I]f the observed acceleration were to continue forever, the Theory would be refuted. But the expansion of life to engulf the universe is EXACTLY what is required to cancel the positive cosmological constant (a.k.a. the Dark Energy)..."

"I relate deeply to Tipler’s... concept that future technology may... resurrect the dead... by... "copying them to the future" and... allow myself to contemplate such possibilities. There may be a point where consciousness becomes a important factor in the destiny of the universe, where conscious beings develop the capability to choose and build the universe they want to inhabit, and invite the dead of past ages to join the party by copying them to the future. ...[T]his soft rationalist, high level and not detailed concept ...will, I hope, be detailed and realized by future scientists and engineers."

"[A] von Neumann cannot become obsolete... instructed by radio to make the latest devices..."

"[T]hat any intelligent species which develops... interstellar communication will also have... rocketry... is... a consequence of the principle of mediocrity... (that our own evolution is typical)... [T]he human species developed rockets 600 years before... radio waves..."

"[T]hus... any intelligent species would develop at least the rocket technology capable of... a travel velocity ves of 3 x 10-4c. At this velocity the travel time to the nearest stars would be between 104 and 105 years. This... would necessitate... self-repair capacity... Nuclear power-souces would supply the power... If power utilization during the free-fall period was... low, even chemical reactions could supply the power."

"The probability that intelligent life which eventually attempts interstellar communication will evolve in a star system is usually expressed by the :p = f_pn_ef_lf_if_cwhere f_p is the probability that a given star system will have planets, n_e is the number of habitable planets in a solar system, f_l is the probability that life evolves on a habitable planet, f_i is the probability that intelligent life evolves on a planet with life, and f_c is the probability that an intelligent species will attempt interstellar communication within 5 billion years after the formation of the planet..."

"Once the exploration and/or colonization of the Galaxy has begun, it can be modeled... by the mathematical theory of island colonization... developed... by MacArthur & Wilson... since... islands... are closely analogous to stars in the heaven, and von Neumann machines are even more closely analogous to biological species."

"This argument assumes that the five probabilities... do not vary rapidly with galactic age. The available astrophysical evidence and most theories of the formation of solar systems indicate... this... is valid."

"The factors f_lf_if_c should not depend strongly on the evolution of the Galaxy... and so can be regarded as constants. Since the Galaxy is between 11 and 18 billion years old, the number N of stars older than 5.3 billion years is about twice the number of stars formed after the Sun, and thus approximately equal to the number of stars in the Galaxy, 1011. Thus p \leqslant 10^{-11}. If we accept the usual values of f_p=0.1 to 1 and n_e = 1 found in most discussions... then f_lf_if_c \leqslant 10^{-10}. The number of communicating civilizations now existing in our Galaxy is less than or equal to p x (number of stars in galaxy) = 1; that is to say, us."

"[T]he problem of interstellar travel has been reduced to... transporting a von Neumann machine to another stellar system. This can be done even with present-day rocket technology."

"In his enthusiasm... Tipler has neglected part of the Popperian lesson about what the growth of knowledge must look like. If the omega point exists, and if... created in the way... Tipler... set out... the late universe will... consist of embodied thoughts of inconceivable wisdom, creativity and sheer numbers. But... problem solving means rival s, errors, criticism, refutation and backtracking. Admittedly, in the limit (which no one experiences), at the instant the universe ends, everything that is comprehensible may have been understood. But at every finite point our descendants' knowledge will be riddled with errors. Their knowledge will be greater, deeper and broader than we can imagine, but they will make mistakes on a correspondingly titanic scale too. Like us, they will never know certainty or physical security, for their survival, like ours, will depend on... creating a continuous stream of new knowledge. If they... fail, even once... to increase... computing speed and memory capacity... the sky will fall in on them and they will die. Their culture... will be split by passionate controversies. ...[I]t seems unlikely that it could... be regarded as a 'person'. Rather... a vast number of people interacting... disagreeing. ...often ...mistaken, and many mistakes ...uncorrected for... long periods (subjectively). Nor... ever... morally homogeneous...Nothing will be sacred... and... people will continually be questioning assumptions that other[s]... consider... fundamental moral truths. ...[B]y the methods of reason, every... controversy will be resolved. But... replaced by... more... fundamental controversies. Such... is very different from... God... But... some subculture within it... will be resurrecting us if Tipler is right."

"Tipler has been criticized... for mixing religion with science. ...also ...for making wrong scientific assumptions. ...[I]t appears that the is accelerating and ...left to itself, will never enter the phase ...a prerequisite for the scenario ...Tipler is certainly wrong on many points that will be corrected by future scientists. But dismissing him as a crank is... like dismissing Leonardo as a crank because his aircraft sketches wouldn’t fly..."

"Wolfhart Pannenberg... suggested... there may exist a... universal physical field (analogous to Teilhard's "radial energy")... as the source of all life, and... identified with the Holy Spirit. ...[T]he universal wave function... is a... field with the essential features of Pannenberg's... "energy" field. ...If this identification is made ...as a matter of physics ...God is in the world, everywhere... with us... at all times."

"One avoids... contradiction between contingency and necessity by avoiding... sharp distinction between God and... reality. This... distinction... leads to gnostic heresy: ...a wholly other God... divorced from our ...world. It also leads... to the Problem of Evil... naturally resolved in the Omega Point Theory."

"The in its counts as a person because, at any time in our future, the collective information processing system will have generated, or will be able to generate, subprograms which will be able to pass the ; high intelligence will be required at least collectively in order to survive in the increasingly complex environment near the final state."

"It is argued that if extraterrestrial intelligent beings exist, then their spaceships must already be present in our solar system."

"The biologists argue that the number of evolutionary pathways leading from one-celled organisms to intelligent beings is minuscule when compared with the total number of evolutionary pathways, and thus even if we grant the existence of life on 109 to 1010 planets in our Galaxy, the probability that intelligence has arisen... [there] on any planet but our own is still very small. I agree..."

"What one needs is a self-reproducing universal constructor... a machine capable of making any device... capable of making a copy of itself. Von Neumann has shown... that such... is theoretically possible, and... a human being is a universal constructor specialized to perform on the surface of the Earth."

"As the copies of the space probe were made, they would be launched at the stars nearest the target star. When these probes reached these stars, the process would be repeated... until the probes covered all the stars of the Galaxy."

"It is a deficiency in computer technology, which prevents us from beginning the exploration of the Galaxy tomorrow."

"I shall assume that such a species will... develop a self-replicating universal constructor with intelligence comparable to the human level—such a machine should be developed within a century, according to the experts...—and... combined with present-day rocket technology would make it possible to explore and/or colonize the Galaxy in less than 300 million years, for an initial investment less than the cost of operating a 10 MW microwave beacon for several hundred years, as proposed by SETI..."

"The payload of a probe to another stellar system would be a self-reproducing universal constructor with human level intelligence (...a von Neumann machine) together with an engine... travelling... within the stellar target system—[the engine] could be an electric propulsion system... or a ..."

"[T]he human-type mind is a manifestation of an extremely low level of information processing... Nevertheless, the Omega Point is still a Person... because a Being with Its level of computer capacity could easily create a Turing-Test-passing subprogram to speak for it. ...[O]ur resurrected selves probably will interact with such a program... For lack of a better term, I shall refer to the total universal information processing system in existence at any given global time as the "universal mind.""