Tech levels and the end of the universe

[S'mon]

"Death of the Sun" - current thinking seems to be that the Earth will slip out of the habitable zone as the sun gets hotter in perhaps 1 billion years, long before the Sun starts swelling to a red giant.

As far as tech advancement letting species survive, any sf tech beyond "we can move some people to a another solar system" seems to me to be entirely fantasy, with no evidence it has been or could ever be achieved, so setting a timeline for it seems completely arbitrary. The sf idea that 'the
future' = 'ever more energy' emerged from the 19th through early 20th century experience of harnessing fossil fuels, and we see it a lot in sf originating in the ca 1910s-1960s, but society hasn't garnered significantly more energy per capita in at least sixty years now (since cars became widespread) and there's no indication that will change.

 

[Janx]

That's OK; we can talk round them!



I do enjoy high concept sci-fi which deals with these concepts we just don't consider -- yet. I mean, the end of the universe has been dealt with in fiction lots of times (makes it no less interesting though); but tiny problems, too can be really interesting. And that's assuming we even still resemble modern humans with the same desires and goals.

I got interrupted, so I had to rewrite my response, hopefully the thought survives.

The key thing your graph implies is that a species can go zero to Doctor Who in a blink of an eye in Universal scale. The Universe is 13 billion years old (or whatever), and the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Surely we don't need another billion years to achieve Doctor Who tech before the sun/earth dies.

I would posit, that instead of measuring a species itself, which is a tiny subset of a planet's lifespan (at least by earth comparison), consider the species evolution time scale. Life started on Eartth probably 3 billion years ago (fix the numnbers, I just made that up). Let's assume we evolve into the Docotor Who-grade beings, so it's less about us being precisely human, so much as related to, in about have a billion years.

So we need a time frame of 3.5 billion years to reach a point where we can save the species (or any/all of the remaining species from our planet).

This time frame must coincide with starting soon enough and reaching the top, before the terminus of the planet or universe ending (as we've talked in the past about finding alien life, what if they haven't started yet to be found).

So each candidate species needs to have spawned soon enough in the universe, and in their own solar system. And they are going to need a 3.5 billion year uninterrupted running timeframe in order to pull this off.

Now I suppose you can rule that a Who-level species NOW clearly spawned 3.5 billion years ago. But it might be more tragic to have some species who are too late to the party. Meaning they are just getting to (or have just reached it) to the right tech level, but the universe has decayed too far for them to have the resources to save it.

For instance, Universe Expansion (again). Let's say you could place barrier stations/repulsors that cover a large area, that you'd just encircle the universe. However large an area these things can cover, you can only build 100 of them. And you need to place them so their radius of influence touches each other. If you are too late in deploying them, the universe will have expanded PAST the point you can build the barrier at, and thus you are too late.

 

[Janx]

"Death of the Sun" - current thinking seems to be that the Earth will slip out of the habitable zone as the sun gets hotter in perhaps 1 billion years, long before the Sun starts swelling to a red giant.

As far as tech advancement letting species survive, any sf tech beyond "we can move some people to a another solar system" seems to me to be entirely fantasy, with no evidence it has been or could ever be achieved, so setting a timeline for it seems completely arbitrary. The sf idea that 'the
future' = 'ever more energy' emerged from the 19th through early 20th century experience of harnessing fossil fuels, and we see it a lot in sf originating in the ca 1910s-1960s, but society hasn't garnered significantly more energy per capita in at least sixty years now (since cars became widespread) and there's no indication that will change.

I don't disagree with your point that we have not actually found more energy (at best, a few more barrels of the same stuff). That's a bummer but a very good observation that we may be overly wishful in assuming we'll solve our energy problem (the problem where we need buttloads of energy to save ourselves).

However your statement, "no evidence it has been or could ever be achieved" is kinda pointless. There's no evidence the iPhone has been achieved before either. At some point in our past, there was no evidence an iPhone could ever be achieved. The statement is pessimistic and in the vein of "it hasn't been done before so it won't work" Debbie Downer talk.

 

[Morrus]

For instance, Universe Expansion (again). Let's say you could place barrier stations/repulsors that cover a large area, that you'd just encircle the universe. However large an area these things can cover, you can only build 100 of them. And you need to place them so their radius of influence touches each other. If you are too late in deploying them, the universe will have expanded PAST the point you can build the barrier at, and thus you are too late.

The thing with the end of the universe is that it only needs one species in the entire cosmos to do this, because saving the universe is in everybody's interests. That assumes that any hypothetical species thinks remotely like us, of course.

 

[Janx]

The thing with the end of the universe is that it only needs one species in the entire cosmos to do this, because saving the universe is in everybody's interests. That assumes that any hypothetical species thinks remotely like us, of course.

So all we need to do is wait for Doctor Who to save us?

I'm suspecting, such a species may indeed "save the universe" but not in a way that specifically saves us (nor maliciously either).

 

[S'mon]

However your statement, "no evidence it has been or could ever be achieved" is kinda pointless. There's no evidence the iPhone has been achieved before either. At some point in our past, there was no evidence an iPhone could ever be achieved. The statement is pessimistic and in the vein of "it hasn't been done before so it won't work" Debbie Downer talk.

No, an iphone in (say) 1914 is more like the spaceship that can travel to Alpha Centauri STL (carrying humans). Well beyond current technology, but nothing like preventing/causing a sun going nova or other such
magitech.

Edit: The Kardashev Scale as such is kind of a marginal case. Harnessing the entire moment-by-moment energy output of a star seems theoretically possible, if possibly pointless, and the technology that
could do that could theoretically be applied to most of the stars in a Galaxy - some areas such as around a central black hole would not be 'farmable'. I would put Kardashev Scale civilisation in the 'immensely unlikely but not impossible' bracket.

 

[Yora]

This needs more thought. A lot more thought!

Why?

I am a follower of the paradigm that an RPG system should not be burdened with needlessly complex and numerous rules, especially when they contribute very little. So my first thought regarding this problem is why it's even a problem to begin with? Why does anyone think this needs to be adressed in any way?

 

[Morrus]

Why?

I am a follower of the paradigm that an RPG system should not be burdened with needlessly complex and numerous rules, especially when they contribute very little. So my first thought regarding this problem is why it's even a problem to begin with? Why does anyone think this needs to be adressed in any way?

Because we find it fun? Does it need any other reason? It's a thought experiment which occurred to me and I found fascinating.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess! Sorry you don't share the interest!

 

[Janx]

No, an iphone in (say) 1914 is more like the spaceship that can travel to Alpha Centauri STL (carrying humans). Well beyond current technology, but nothing like preventing/causing a sun going nova or other such
magitech.

Edit: The Kardashev Scale as such is kind of a marginal case. Harnessing the entire moment-by-moment energy output of a star seems theoretically possible, if possibly pointless, and the technology that
could do that could theoretically be applied to most of the stars in a Galaxy - some areas such as around a central black hole would not be 'farmable'. I would put Kardashev Scale civilisation in the 'immensely unlikely but not impossible' bracket.

In 1914 there is no evidence that an iPhone has ever existed before.

In 1914, there is no evidence that an iPhone could exist. What scientific advances existed at that time to lead people of 1914 to imagine an iPhone could exist?

Go back further, and it becomes increasingly implausible that educated people of a given era would see an iPhone as anything plausible because nothing in the known scientific world at a more primitive time frame supports such invention being possible.

Thus, the statement "no evidence it has been or could ever be achieved" is functionally useless in the discussion when compared to other technological advances and the same statement would be true for them, despite the fact that they now exist. As such, it merely adds negativity.

 

[S'mon]

In 1914, there is no evidence that an iPhone could exist. What scientific advances existed at that time to lead people of 1914 to imagine an iPhone could exist?

Electricity. Telephones. You know an iPhone is still a telephone, right?

My reference to 'evidence has existed' referred to large-scale galactic engineering projects that one might expect to be visible in the universe.