Can life survive the end of the universe?

Allen Tough

Adapted extract from a book entitled 'Crucial Questions About the Future' by Allen Tough, published by the University Press of America (4720 Boston Way, Lanham MD 20706, USA, tel 301 459 3366), 1991, ISBN 0 8191 8275 3, distributed in the UK by Eurospan, 3 Henrietta St, London WC2E 8LU.

If we look far enough into the future, we can imagine the end of our physical universe, at least in any form that would support human life as we know it. We can imagine the universe expanding for ever, becoming colder and colder, until finally it is completely frozen, quiet and barren. Alternatively we can imagine it collapsing inwardly, becoming hotter and hotter, ending in a 'Big Crunch'.

'Life detached from flesh and blood and embodied in networks of superconducting circuitry or in interstellar dust clouds'

Can life and intelligence somehow survive if the physical universe meets either of these fates? Intelligent life will have countless billions of years to advance and change before there is any need to adjust to the various stages of the 'end' of the physical universe. By that time, at least in some parts of the universe, intelligent life may have progressed so much that it can figure out how to avoid the extermination of all life, knowledge, intelligence and wisdom. Indeed, Freeman Dyson and Michael Michaud have already explored some possible ways of achieving this. For instance, a huge, cooperative, galactic or intergalactic project may find some method of altering the physical universe (or one portion of it) in some powerful and massive way that will enable life to continue. A second possibility is that life itself will change and adapt in ways that will permit it to continue for ever. If it is true 'that life is organisation rather than substance, then it makes sense to imagine life detached from flesh and blood and embodied in networks of superconducting circuitry or in interstellar dust clouds' (Dyson). Alternatively, some way may be found to break out of this universe into another one, either existing parallel to it or arising subsequent to it. Perhaps the best of our knowledge, intelligence, consciousness or life can be transferred to another universe.

Allen Tough, Adult Education Dept, OISE (University of Toronto, 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON, Canada M5S 1V6 (tel 416 968 7246; fax 926 4725).

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