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What if intelligent, self-aware systems existed in the earlier phases of the universe? Would they have understood the changes taking place in the universe, the
by 01100011 6y ago
What if intelligent, self-aware systems existed in the earlier phases of the universe? Would they have understood the changes taking place in the universe, their eventual demise, and taken steps to allow life of a new form to emerge after the universal condensation?
Obviously there is no way of knowing, but it was an amusing thought to consider for a moment.
- buttercraft 6y agoWould this not apply today?
- newacct583 6y agoThere are such systems. And we're in fact making a very feeble attempt to do exactly that. Right here. In this thread on HN.
- agumonkey 6y agoearlier you mean pre big bang ?
- krastanov 6y agoMore like the extremely hot early universe, e.g., before the universe became transparent to the cosmic background radiation (<1M years after the Big Bang).
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago> before the universe became transparent to the cosmic background radiation (<1M years after the Big Bang) There were millions of years when the universe was transparent and room temperature [1]. [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-astrobiology/article/abs/habitable-epoch-of-the-early-universe/114595C6E860A5002A9B783875602106 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journa...
- raducu 6y agoRoom temperature does not mean safe for carbon life, I'm sure at a far enough distance from a nuclear reactor's core there's "room temperature". But at that time, there must have been very few heavy elements so any life must have been "plasma life" and "room temperature" probably was very unpleasant for them.
- stcredzero 6y agoThey could also mean the early, hot universe vs. today. In those hyper-dense conditions, it's possible that something like nucleonic matter could form the complex patterns of life and intelligence, which would proceed many orders of magnitude faster than our own chemical reaction based life and intelligence. (See Robert Forward's "Starquake" books about life on the surface of a neutron star. Those creatures would experience time at millions of times the speed we do.) Entire eons of civilizations could have arisen and disappeared, with their own "heat death" of the universe from their perspective. At some point, the universe would expand and cool to the point that the form of matter required for their existence would generally cease to exist, destroying everything from their civilization, utterly and completely. In Roger Penrose's Conformal cyclic cosmology, another universe could arise after the heat death of our own, just at a different scale in time and space, where the cold, thin, red-shifted to oblivion photons left over from our universe would comprise a Big Bang in a far slower, cooler, and vaster universe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformal_cyclic_cosmology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformal_cyclic_cosmology
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- krastanov 6y agoI would love to read a sci-fi story about organisms that evolved in the early plasma universe and how they used technology to create arks to carry them through the rapidly cooling universe. And then one day an ark filled with primordial plasma passes by Earth and says hi.
- TehCorwiz 6y agoRobert L. Forward wrote a pair of hard sci-fi novels, 'Dragon's Egg' & 'Starquake' about a manned Earth probe that discovers sentient life that evolved in the hot plasma on the surface of a star. I prefer the second more, but both are very good.
- layoutIfNeeded 6y ago* a neutron star
- gus_massa 6y agoYou may enjoy reading about the best models of the structure of the matter near the surface of a neutron star, that is called "nuclear pasta" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pasta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pasta and one with graphics that explain the names https://astrobites.org/2017/10/05/nuclear-pasta-in-neutron-stars/ https://astrobites.org/2017/10/05/nuclear-pasta-in-neutron-s...
- tablespoon 6y ago> I would love to read a sci-fi story about organisms that evolved in the early plasma universe and how they used technology to create arks to carry them through the rapidly cooling universe. And then one day an ark filled with primordial plasma passes by Earth and says hi. Stephen Baxter's Xeelee series actually touches on quite a bit of that, but his writing is such that I'd honestly prefer to read it in outline form with the conceptual bits pasted in. IIRC, the short story "The Quagma Datum" from Vacuum Diagrams deals with that most directly, and is similar the story your asking for, complete with an ark. Also the titular Xeelee are also survivors from the very early universe.
- wyldfire 6y agoI don't think you're alone with these thoughts. The absence of evidence of other sentient beings (Fermi paradox IIRC) is an input to the theoretical Great Filter. EDIT: I misread what you wrote. It's not quite as related. But maybe only a little.
- baetylus 6y agoI like your word choice of “self-aware systems,” as I’m curious if there are other permutations of atoms that can give consciousness. Maybe I’m leaning too heavily into the sci-fi realm though.
- raducu 6y agoBoltzmann brains aeons upon aeons after the death of the last star, or Boltzmann brains before the Big Bang as result of quantum fluctuations?
- BlueTemplar 6y agoI'm not sure that before the big bang even means something?
- sooheon 6y agoTed Chiang's Exhalation is one of the very best I've read in this vein (also in the GP's sense of "life on different entropic timescales"). Highly recommended if you haven't read it yet.
- BlueTemplar 6y agoThanks a lot for the recommendation, it's a great collection of short stories.
- TheHypnotist 6y agoThis sounds like part of the premise of Mass Effect, except replace universal condensation with giant robotic type creatures who feed on all life.