The Thermodynamics of Death

 by M.C. Price [Editor: This article is reprinted from Extropy #6, Summer 1990. Extropy was published by The Extropy institute]

First this little planet with its winds and ways, and then all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him, and at last out across immensity to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning.

- The Shape of Things to Come.

Cataclysmic Futures

As an immortalist I want to live forever. Not just for a thousand or a googolplex of years but forever. It is the almost universal opinion of scientists and philosophers that the universe we currently live in will become uninhabitable with the passage of time, and this is accepted at face value by many people. Such people can dismiss the idea of personal immortality because they see it as incompatible with a universe in which life is an ephemeral phase. This article will expose the total falsity of this mindset, by the simple expedient of applying a modicum of logic to this situation.

Pessimistic eschatological visions of the future have traditionally appealed more to the human mind than utopian visions. In Scandinavian mythology all is lost at the end of time as the Frost Giants wage war against the gods, the Fenris-Wolf is loosed and the World-Worm awakens, leading to the destruction of the three worlds of gods, dwarfs, and men in the cataclysmic fire of Ragnarok. Hinduism has a ruling trinity of the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer; the latter will destroy the world in an orgy of flame at the appointed hour. Early Christianity revelled in the imminent destruction of the world, as set out in Revelations, until its adoption by the emperor Constantine as a state religion, and is still enthused about in almost every crackpot fundamentalist sect, permeating many facets of Western culture.

Turning to more serious, (if not quite so graphic) visions, there are some projections of the future that we can dismiss because they ignore the reality of the technological progress (replicator technology coupled with superintelligence will vastly expand the resources available for coping with inimical changes in the environment). Scenarios that fall into this class are ones that project natural trends in the universe at large into the distant future. Two examples are:

In about 10 billion years (give or take 5 billion - but then what’s a few billion years to the likes of we immortals?) the sun will burn out, the seas will freeze over, the skies will darken, the plants and the rest of the ecosystem will perish and will all die. Well I don’t think I’ll be losing any sleep over that one, since in 10 billion years civilization will have spread far, far beyond the confines of the Local group of galaxies (self replicating space probes and all that - see later), let alone our own puny solar system.

On a slightly longer timescale is the collapsing universe picture which envisages the Hubble expansion of space, and the embedded galaxies, as halting billions of years from now; the exact time is unclear and depends on the average density of the universe, which has yet to be accurately determined. All the indications are that the universe is very close to the watershed density, below which the expansion never halts. Then it reverses and, over a period of time comparable to the expansion, comes to resemble the interior of a nuclear furnace, as the ambient temperature rises, and we are all reduced to our subatomic components.

Unfortunately for this grim outlook (but fortunately for us) we will have had total mastery over space itself for billions of years and by then will be quite up to the job of stopping the contraction of the universe. Ever since Einstein we’ve known that the space-time fabric feels the effect of forces (gravity in particular) in the same way as other materials. More recently with the advent of unified field theories we’ve come to realize that the forces of physics are all aspects of one central force. The corollary of this is that we’ll shortly have the same control over gravity (and the other forces) that we currently exert over electromagnetism. This will lead to space being manipulated as readily as current building components (giving us wormholes through space for travel, for example). We’ll have the option either of stopping the contraction directly or of constructing separate bubbles of space to inhabit, to avoid the Big Crunch, of more likely some other method that we can’t foresee at the moment.

Self-Replicating Probes

In the next category of objections are projections of technological advances that are considered in isolation. An example of this is the colonizing/terraforming of nearby and distant star systems by self-replicating intelligent space probes, an idea championed by Frank Tipler. Earth sends out the first generation of probes, each of which travels to a nearby star system, to set up its automated factories there.

Terraformation of the system proceeds under the probe’s mechanical brain, along with the next generation of probes.

Later, civilization from Earth follows to occupy the prepared environment set up. In this way the galaxy can be colonized within a few million years, without the need for faster than light travel.

The cautionary note on the subject has been sounded by Nigel Calder. His thesis is that Darwinian selection would operate on the probes, evolutionary pressures selecting against the terraforming, but strongly in favor of the reproductive mechanisms (bearing in mind that probes with extensive error correcting servomechanisms will reproduce at a slower rate than other, less careful, probes). Clearly probes that concentrate purely on breeding will have a reproductive advantage over the terraforming probes. Within a number of generations the ‘nice’ probes that were originally sent out are superceded by ‘nasty’ ones, which fight amongst themselves for resources (planets and other interstellar material). Instead of terraforming the Milky Way,Earth will have spawned a new form of life that feeds on planetary material, which return as waves of ravenously hungry space rats, to reduce us to molten slag.This is to take a narrow view of the situation. It is rather doubtful that Sol will relinquish hegemony over the galaxy by allowing uncontrolled breeding of probes. Each probe will impress upon its descendants loyalty to its builder as part of its programming, each succeeding generation programming the next faithfully, establishing a chain of command with us at the top. Evolutionary pressures can only become active agents when the probes are competing with one another, so the extra effort involved in instilling obedience into probes is not selected against. Let’s assume, however, for the sake of argument, that the chains of authority are broken and autonomous spheres of influence emerge (i.e., cultures form amongst the probes that don’t acknowledge fealty to Sol). The star systems around Earth will have been settled by probes that are loyal to Sol, with their programming which makes them receptive to instructions from Mission Control and each other, in force. Therefore they will be able to cooperate with each other more effectively, across a wider domain of space, than the ‘nasty’ probes. Wars between the descendants of ‘nasty’ probes will avoid our sector because they know they will meet with more organized resistance here than elsewhere. There is a more general underlying problem here, namely the division of finite resources amongst an expanding population of immortals, that I will address later in the article.

Are there any other visions of the future which may justifiably cloud our dreams of an endless demi-godlike existence? Well this would be a boring article if there were not some other more substantive objections to tasting the Apples of Immortality. So let’s examine the thermodynamic objections, since they make no artificial assumptions about bounds or trends on technological growth, but are based on the limitations imposed by physical law.

Thermodynamics

The laws of thermodynamics are macroscopic descriptions of the behavior of systems, which are in principle deducible from more fundamental principles, such as Newton’s Laws of motion, but which provide an essential short-cut in analyzing a complex system’s behavior. Only the first two laws interest us here. They were formulated in the 1840s and accompanied the growth in understanding the principles behind the operation of internal combustion engines. Here I’ve stated the laws in the form most germane to our purpose.

The First Law of thermodynamics states that the energy of a closed system remains constant, with energy being neither created nor destroyed by internal processes, but merely converted from one from to another. The use of the word energy differs here from popular use. If I turn on an electric light then I’m not using up energy in the strict sense of the word. What’s happening is that electrical energy is being converted into electromagnetic energy (photons or light particles) and finally into thermal energy when the light is absorbed by an object. This law looks like a statement of the obvious to us now because we’ve become familiar with the concept of energy, but when it was originally formulated in the mid-nineteenth century the notion of energy was new.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is more interesting to us and says that the entropy (which is a precise measure of the amount of disorder present) of a closed system always increases. Life is a system or structure that maintains its order (homeostasis) in the presence of hostile environmental factors. Life and entropy can be viewed as opposing tendencies. A living organism sustains its existence (internal homeostasis) by transferring order from its environment to itself (feeding). Viewed as a whole (food plus consumer) the activity of maintaining life increases total entropy, as do all processes. Life on Earth has been living off the temperature difference between the surface of the sun (which determines the spectrum of sunlight) and interstellar space, which has acted as a heat sink for the waste energy of life.

The two laws have stood the test of time very well,with the definition of energy and entropy being extended,from their earliest conception by the classical physicists, to take into account relativity and quantum theory.If it could be shown that these two laws forbid immortality then we’d be in a very sorry way, and the prospect of immortality would have to be confined to those same halls of infamy of pseudoscience that contain methods of squaring the circle. Luckily this isn’t the case and the very arguments proposed by many scientists and physicists against eternal existence, that use thermodynamics, can be defeated by applying these same laws more rigorously.

Maximum Entropy?

The case against the persistence of our structures into eternity is very simple and seemingly watertight. It is that the universe is a closed system and therefore its entropy level will eventually rise to the maximum allowed by its energy constraints and in the process all ordered systems (which includes life in all its possible forms) will be eradicated. This fate is known vividly as the heat death of the universe, all the usable energy having been dissipated as heat, and rather gripped the Victorian mind, one of the earliest descriptions of it appearing in the classic SF novel The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. Travelling far, far into the future the time traveller comes into an era of desolation when all life has passed from the surface of the Earth, the Morlocks and Eloi and everything else of any relevance. this is a picture of the end of the world that reappears throughout the time travelling genre. The universe left at the end of this process is a sterile, bitterly cold barren wilderness in which every erg of energy has, eons past, been converted to heat and radiated out into the void.

Calculations have been done on how long intelligences can maintain themselves, in the face of the encroaching heat death, powering themselves from stars and later, when all the stars have burnt out, the gravitational fields surrounding rotating black holes. After about a quintrillion years (by which I mean a trillion raised to the fifth power, or 1060) the power becomes too meager to sustain life. We don’t have to concern ourselves trying to get some handle on the vastness of this span of time (although I mention in passing that there are approximately a quintrillion subatomic particles in the solar system, for those aspiring mental gymnasts who wish to attempt this awesome feat), except to note that this falls far short of our friend infinity (or more accurately, aleph-0). Long after the passing of life the matter is mopped up by black holes which much, much later evaporate (via Hawking radiation) into a cloud of low energy photons. Any matter not swallowed by black holes turns into a mixture of free electrons, neutrinos and photons, via proton decay, so that the lifeless universe is finally stripped of all vestiges of material objects.

This looks very somber for us. All our efforts doomed to eventual failure, ending up as dust (or rust), not food for worms but rather turned into a rarefied gas cloud. We can imagine the once mighty sentient beings of the dim and distant future eking out a miserable existence in the long twilight of their lives, jealously hoarding their power supplies  like dragons of old myth, guarding caverns of gold, postponing the awful day of non-existence for as long as possible.

If this is what fate has in line for us, cheating us of our rightful destiny as Masters of the Universe, Lords of Creation, then we might as well drink from the cup of hemlock now and die with a curse on our lips, in the flower of the universe’s youth, rather than its miserly old age.

The Open Future

What the doom merchants have forgotten to do is apply thermodynamics to the creation of the universe itself in the Big Bang. All processes are subject to the constraints of physical law. Therefore the creation of the universe must conform to the First Law. Since there was zero energy present before the creation then there must be zero now, i.e., the universe has zero total energy. Bizarre though this concept seems it is the inevitable consequence of applying physical law to all aspects of existence. All energy must be balanced by an equal amount of negative energy. The immediate inference we can draw from this is that, whilst the sum of the energy in the universe totals to nought, the amount of free energy available for our use is unlimited. The concept of negative energy has been around for many years, although I won’t go into technical details here, it has long been recognized that the gravitational field possesses negative energy and that this could balance the positive energy tied up in matter. There are other interpretations though, so I won’t place my entire trust solely in gravity.

Most cosmologists working in the field of the evolution of the early universe accept the Inflationary Theory which accounts for the size and expansion of the universe, in the period immediately after the creation (which is being seen as the necessary consequence of physical law acting on nothing), by a massive injection of energy from literally nowhere, which occurred when the vacuum that existed after the dimensions of space-time had stabilized decayed to the vacuum that exists now. The decay happened because the current vacuum state has a lower energy density than the original, with the energy gap fueling the production of matter in the early universe. Such symmetry-breaking of the vacuum, as it is known in modern field theories, is believed to have happened a number of times and implies that the vacuum today possesses a negative energy with respect to an earlier one. We don’t perceive this as negative because all energy levels are measured relative to others and we commonly accept the energy of the vacuum state as our zero-point yardstick - in other words, we are defining the lowest energy level currently available as the base against which all other levels are measured. When we have the forces of nature under our control then we shall be able to generate power by the same principle, although in a much more effective and controlled manner (by the principle that anything that nature does we shall eventually surpass) - like flight). The fact that the energy of the universe sums to zero is what will stop life from being a zero-sum game. The Inflationary Theory is also known colloquially as the Free Lunch theory, for obvious reasons.

The resolution of the apparent paradox of this with the Second Law lies in the fact that whilst the total amount of entropy will always increase across the totality of existence, the ability of the environment to handle all thisundesirable, high entropy waste (e.g., heat) will be rising faster. The First Law, whilst being true in actuality, is effectively rendered impotent as a limitation on the access of civilization to power supplies.

This means that we, the Immortals, can look forward to a future in which there are truly infinite power sources available for tapping, a veritable bottomless horn of plenty, to meet our needs for all eternity. We can see now the solution to the problem of meeting the needs of an ever expanding civilization. In the universe that’s opening up to us the resources won’t be finite. Ergo the conflicts that arise from scarcity will disappear. Life in Utopia will become the birthright of all self-interested, rational beings, a world of wealth beyond all dreams of avarice, a never-ending lazy existence, with all our desires attended to by superintelligent servants, our minds expanded to unimaginable dimensions, free to roam across the vast reaches of space. The future belongs to us, for ever and ever, worlds without end. Even after a quintrillion years we will still have only just begun. The best is yet, and always shall be, to come.

Thus the Jeremiahs are refuted. Elementary really