clifford_a-_pickover_surfing_through_hyperspacebookfi-org

166 surfing through hyperspace
Where will humans be, five billion years from now, at the end of the world?
Even if we could somehow withstand the incredible heat of the sun, we would
not survive. In about seven billion years, the Sun's outer "atmosphere" will
engulf the Earth. Due to atmospheric friction, the Earth will spiral into the sun
and incinerate. In one trillion years, stars will cease to form and all large stars
will have become neutron stars or black holes. In 100 trillion years, even the
longest-lived stars will have used up all their fuel.
If this ending seems too dismal, perhaps we should ask if there is hope for
humanity when the Sun expands to engulf the Earth in seven billion years. To
give an answer, first consider that around four billion years ago, living creatures
were nothing more than biochemical machines capable of self-reproduction. In
a mere fraction of this time, humans evolved from creatures like Australopithecines.
Today humans have wandered the Moon and have studied ideas
ranging from general relativity to quantum cosmology. Once space travel
begins in earnest, our descendents will leave the confinement of Earth. Because
the ultimate fate of the universe involves great cold or great heat, it is likely
that Homo sapiens will become extinct. However, our civilization and our values
may not be doomed. Who knows into what beings we will evolve? Who
knows what intelligent machines we will create that will be our ultimate heirs?
These creatures might survive virtually forever. They may be able to easily contemplate
higher dimensions, and our ideas, hopes, and dreams carried with
them. There is a strangeness to the loom of our universe that may encompass
time travel, higher dimensions, quantum superspace, and parallel universes—
worlds that resemble our own and perhaps even occupy the same space as our
own in some ghostly manner.
Some physicists have suggested that the fourth dimension may provide the
only refuge for intelligent life. Michio Kaku, author of Hyperspace, suggests
that "in the last seconds of death of our universe, intelligent life may escape the
collapse by fleeing into hyperspace." Our heirs, whatever or whoever they may
be, will explore these new possibilities. They will explore space and time. They
will seek their salvation in the higher universes.
The upbeat feelings of theoretical physicist Freeman J. Dyson best express
my beliefs:
Godel proved that the world of pure mathematics is inexhaustible; no
finite set of axioms and rules of inference can ever encompass the
whole of mathematics; given any finite set of axioms, we can find
meaningful mathematical questions which the axioms leave unan-