Life's Immortality within the Multiverse

Director of the Future of Life Research Centre, David Hunter Tow, proposes that the laws of evolution and physics guarantee life’s immortality within the universe.

According to a number of leading physicists and cosmologists, it is possible that our particular universe, initiated by the big bang, is but one of many; perhaps an infinite number of universes all existing within a larger meta or multi-universe.

Cosmological hypotheses postulate that universes have their genesis in a quantum fluctuation of an all-pervasive energy field. More recent theories suggest a titanic clash of 3D branes or an endlessly repeating cyclic of collapse and anti-gravitational rebound. Most are false starts, which at best generate ‘baby’ universes. Others undergo a period of inflation or accelerated expansion, evolving to a larger universe through an process similar to our own biological evolution; capable of generating carbon-based life, as defined by physicist Lee Smolin.

In addition, physicists such as André Linde and Nobuyuki Sakai have proposed that it may be theoretically possible to induce an initial quantum fluctuation utilising a magnetic monopole and additional mass, thereby triggering the initial conditions for the creation of a universe, artificially. This opens up the possibility that in the far future, universes may be designed to specification, capable of evolving carbon-based life like ourselves or alternative life forms based on other exotic forms of matter.

Therefore if life is capable of achieving such a hyper-advanced level of intelligence, it is likely to also possess the capability of seeding a universe either in physical or simulated form, which will support its continued existence; recreating the conditions for the spontaneous re-emergence of life ad infinitum. This opens the way for life to achieve a path to immortality.

A second pathway follows from the thesis outlined in the author’s generic evolutionary treatise The Future of Life- A Unified Theory of Evolution, which demonstrates that all processes within the physical and social fabric of the universe are constantly evolving and that all life continues to gain knowledge and complexity, with no end in sight.

This is predicated on life’s potential trajectory as an effective information processor. Information processing is achieved in all life-forms via cellular processes and in more highly evolved species by a nervous system and brain. Generating and processing information is therefore a primary function of life’s existence, guaranteeing not only its survival, but its continuing selection as a vital adaptive process within the wider universe.

Life’s adaptation as an increasingly efficient form of information generator has now been enormously amplified by its co-option of computational and artificial intelligence, ensuring its capacity to convert energy and entropy to information at an exponential rate; in the process accelerating to unimaginable levels of cognisance.

According to leading physicist and cosmologist Professor Frank Tipler, such a meta-form of life may eventually be capable of infinitely delaying the collapse of the universe, preserving true immortality for a final Omega or End Point.

In addition, systems theory specifies that all adaptive entities such as life must be open and connected to their larger environment, in order to exchange the necessary information and energy for their survival. Such open systems in the universe are like an infinite set of Russian dolls- one inside the other with no beginning or end; constituting the larger building blocks of reality. Adaptive systems may also be categorised as self-organising, constantly remaking themselves in an endless dynamic evolving state.

Life therefore is an integral component of and symbiotic with the universe. Attempting to define a specific beginning or end within such an evolving system is pointless, as each of the myriad process outcomes continually interacts with others as inputs, mediated by countless evolving feedback loops. Our causal chain of reasoning may in fact be an illusion, in terms of requiring a beginning and an end. Process start and finishing points within the universe are indeterminate; each triggering others and connecting seamlessly through space and time.

Equally pointless is to attempt therefore to inject a supernatural Being or Deity at the creation point of a universe, because in the larger cosmos there is likely to be an infinite number of such events without beginning or end. It could however be conjectured that an Omega Point, once achieved, could generate countless other universes, but that then begs the question, at which point in the endless cycle did the Omega Point emerge.