Andrew A. Watts: AI and the Heat Death of the Universe
AI and the Heat Death of the Universe
Scientific predictions regarding the destruction of the Earth, extinguishing of our Sun, and ultimate dissipation of the universe come as an existential threat for many. Despite how dispassionately these theories are presented, these notions conjure fear because of our inherent will to live. They further provoke a sense of profound grief and helplessness when we consider that the continuation of our collective species may be threatened by a seemingly inevitable future.
How would an artificial intelligence react to or interpret this timeline of a distant future where not only are humans extinct, but all planets, stars, and the universe itself (as we know it) no longer exist? Can AI respond to the very human experience of this existential threat?
This work uses AI to generate images and videos based on a series of scientific predictions of the fate of the universe. The human-like faces were AI generated by https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ and the cyborg faces were created with the help of Adobe Generative AI.
The form of each movement is based on dynamic systems, with a graphic rendering of each respective computer simulation shown below. The chaos expressed in these systems is sonified in an effort to appropriately pair the composition ideology with the similarly themed astrophysical conjectures. To this end, I would like to express my thanks to my brother, Fred Watts, for his assistance in Python. With his help, the code for each equation was parsed as raw data I then applied to various musical parameters.
The text was assembled by Andrew A. Watts from dozens of scientific and public domain sources, listed in the references section.
Prologue
Bifurcation diagram of the logistic map. The attractor for any value of the parameter r is shown on the vertical line at that r.1
In the dynamical systems branch of mathematics, a bifurcation diagram quantifies these changes by showing how fixed points, periodic orbits, or chaotic attractors of a system change as a function of bifurcation parameter. Bifurcation diagrams are used to visualize these changes.
TEXT:
As technology and research evolve and the world enters the third revolution of warfare following gunpowder and nuclear weapons, the artificial intelligence arms race ensues between the United States, China, and Russia, three countries with the world's top five highest military budgets.
Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.2
A weaponized conscious super-intelligence would affect current military technological supremacy and transform warfare;3 it is therefore highly desirable for strategic military planning and interstate warfare.4 Here, AI is viewed in geopolitically strategic terms and pursuing a military-civil fusion strategy to build on a nation's first-mover advantage in the development of AI.5
The Singularity would signal the end of the human era, as the new super-intelligence would continue to upgrade itself and would advance technologically at an incomprehensible rate.6
Some have long predicted that people will be able to upload their entire brains to computers and become digitally immortal.7
The Singularity will allow us to transcend these limitations of our biological bodies and brains ... There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine.8
What does immortality mean on a cosmic scale?
How far into the future can the post-human exist?
Phase I – The End of Reality as We Know It
The Lorenz system is a system of ordinary differential equations first studied by mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz. It is notable for having chaotic solutions for certain parameter values and initial conditions. In particular, the Lorenz attractor9 is a set of chaotic solutions of the Lorenz system. In popular media the "butterfly effect" stems from the real-world implications of the Lorenz attractor, namely that several different initial chaotic conditions evolve in phase space in a way that never repeats, so all chaos is unpredictable. This underscores that chaotic systems can be completely deterministic and yet still be inherently unpredictable over long periods of time. Because chaos continually increases in systems, we cannot predict the future of systems well. E.g., even the small flap of a butterfly’s wings could set the world on a vastly different trajectory, such as by causing a hurricane. The shape of the Lorenz attractor itself, when plotted in phase space, may also be seen to resemble a butterfly.
TEXT:
In 17,000 years: Best-guess recurrence rate for a "civilization-threatening" supervolcanic eruption large enough to spew one teraton (or one trillion tons) of pyroclastic material.10,11
In 50,000 years: The current interglacial period will end, sending the Earth back into a glacial period of the current ice age,12 regardless of the effects of anthropogenic global warming. However, anthropogenic climate change, if left unchecked, may delay this otherwise expected glacial period by as much as an additional 50,000 years, potentially skipping it entirely.13
In 500,000 years: Earth will likely have been hit by an asteroid of roughly 1 kilometer in diameter, assuming that it cannot be averted.14
In 10 million years: Estimated time for full recovery of biodiversity after a potential Holocene extinction, if it were on the scale of the five previous major extinction events.15 Even without a mass extinction, by this time most current species will have disappeared through the background extinction rate, with many clades gradually evolving into new forms.16,17
In 100 million years: Earth will likely have been hit by an asteroid comparable in size to the one that triggered the K–Pg extinction 66 million years ago, assuming this cannot be averted.18
In 250 million years: Rapid biological evolution may occur due to the formation of a supercontinent causing lower temperatures and higher oxygen levels.19 Increased competition between species due to the formation of a supercontinent, increased volcanic activity and less hospitable conditions due to global warming from a brighter Sun could result in a mass extinction event from which plant and animal life may not fully recover.20
In 500 million years: Estimated time until a gamma-ray burst, or massive, hyperenergetic supernova, occurs within 6,500 light-years of Earth; close enough for its rays to affect Earth's ozone layer and potentially trigger a mass extinction, assuming the hypothesis is correct that a previous such explosion triggered the Ordovician–Silurian extinction event. However, the supernova would have to be precisely oriented relative to Earth to have any such effect.21
In 500 to 600 million years: As water evaporates from the Earth's surface, rocks harden, causing plate tectonics to slow and eventually stop once the oceans evaporate completely.22 By this time, carbon dioxide levels will fall to the point at which C3 photosynthesis is no longer possible. All plants that utilize C3 photosynthesis (approximately 99 percent of present-day species) will die.23 The death of most plant life will result in less oxygen in the atmosphere, allowing for more DNA-damaging ultraviolet radiation to reach the surface. The rising temperatures will increase chemical reactions in the atmosphere, further lowering oxygen levels.24
In 800 to 900 million years: Carbon dioxide levels will fall to the point at which C4 photosynthesis is no longer possible.25 Without plant life to recycle oxygen in the atmosphere, free oxygen and the ozone layer will disappear from the atmosphere allowing for intense levels of deadly UV light to reach the surface.26 Eventually, all multicellular life will die out.27 The only life left on the Earth after this will be single-celled organisms.
In 1.1 billion years: The Sun's luminosity will have increased by 10%, causing Earth's surface temperatures to reach an average of around 116 degrees Fahrenheit.28,29
In 1.3 billion years: Eukaryotic life dies out on Earth due to carbon dioxide starvation. Only prokaryotes remain.30
In 2 billion years: High estimate until the Earth's oceans evaporate if the atmospheric pressure were to decrease via the nitrogen cycle.31
In 2.8 billion years: Earth's surface temperature will reach around 296 degrees Fahrenheit, even at the poles. High estimate until all remaining life goes extinct.32,33
In 3.5 to 4.5 billion years: The Sun's luminosity will have increased by 35 to 40%, causing all water currently present in lakes and oceans to evaporate, if it had not done so earlier. The greenhouse effect caused by the massive, water-rich atmosphere will result in Earth's surface temperature rising to 2,060 degrees Fahrenheit—hot enough to melt some surface rock.34,35,36,37
In 6.6 billion years: The Sun may experience a helium flash, resulting in its core becoming as bright as the combined luminosity of all the stars in the Milky Way galaxy.38
In 7.59 billion years: The Earth and Moon are very likely destroyed by falling into the Sun, just before the Sun reaches the tip of its red giant phase.39 Before the final collision, the Moon possibly spirals below Earth's Roche limit, breaking into a ring of debris, most of which falls to the Earth's surface.40
Phase II – Solar Destruction
The Rössler attractor41 is the attractor for the Rössler system, a system of three non-linear ordinary differential equations originally studied by Otto Rössler in the 1970s.42,43 These differential equations define a continuous-time dynamical system that exhibits chaotic dynamics associated with the fractal properties of the attractor.44 Rössler interpreted it as a formalization of a taffy-pulling machine.45
TEXT:
In 100 to 150 billion years: All the approximately 47 galaxies46 of the Local Group will coalesce into a single large galaxy.47 The Universe's expansion causes all galaxies beyond the former Milky Way's Local Group to disappear beyond the cosmic light horizon, removing them from the observable universe.48,49 Therefore, intergalactic transportation and communication beyond the Local Supercluster becomes causally impossible.50
In 1 trillion years: Low estimate for the time until star formation ends in galaxies as galaxies are depleted of the gas clouds that they need to form stars.51 The Universe's expansion, assuming a constant dark energy density, multiplies the wavelength of the cosmic microwave background by 10 to the power of 29, exceeding the scale of the cosmic light horizon and rendering its evidence of the Big Bang undetectable.52
In 1.05 trillion years: Estimated time by which the Universe will have expanded by a factor of more than 10 to the power of 26, reducing the average particle density to less than one particle per cosmological horizon volume. Beyond this point, particles of unbound intergalactic matter are effectively isolated, and collisions between them cease to affect the future evolution of the Universe.53
In 2 trillion years: Estimated time by which all objects beyond our Local Group are redshifted by a factor of more than 10 to the power of 53. Even gamma rays that they emit are stretched so much that their wavelengths are greater than the physical diameter of the horizon. The resolution time for such radiation will exceed the physical age of the universe. Therefore, these galaxies will no longer be detectable in any way.54
In 100 trillion years: High estimate for the time by which normal star formation ends in galaxies.55 This marks the transition from the Stelliferous Era to the Degenerate Era; with no free hydrogen to form new stars, all remaining stars slowly exhaust their fuel and die.56
In 1 quadrillion years: Estimated time until stellar close encounters detach all planets in star systems (including the Solar System) from their orbits.57 By this point, the Sun will have cooled to negative 450.67 degrees Fahrenheit.58
In 100 sextillion years: Around this timescale most stellar remnants and other objects are ejected from the remains of their galactic cluster.59
In 1 nonillion years: Estimated time until most or all of the remaining 1 to 10% of stellar remnants not ejected from galaxies fall into their galaxies' central supermassive black holes. By this point, with binary stars having fallen into each other, and planets into their stars, via emission of gravitational radiation, only solitary objects (such as stellar remnants, brown dwarfs, ejected planetary-mass objects, black holes) will remain in the universe.60
In 2 undecillion years: Estimated time for all nucleons in the observable universe to decay.61,62
In 30 tredecillion years: Estimated time for all nucleons in the observable universe to decay,63 assuming that the Big Bang was inflationary and that the same process that made baryons predominate over anti-baryons in the early Universe makes protons decay.64 By this time, if protons do decay, the Black Hole Era, in which black holes are the only remaining celestial objects, begins.65,66
Interlude
Computer simulation of Chua's circuit after 100 seconds, showing chaotic "double scroll" attractor pattern.67
Chua's circuit (also known as a Chua circuit) is a simple electronic circuit that exhibits classic chaotic behavior. This means roughly that it is a "nonperiodic oscillator"; it produces an oscillating waveform that, unlike an ordinary electronic oscillator, never "repeats". It was invented in 1983 by Leon O. Chua, who was a visitor at Waseda University in Japan at that time.68 The ease of construction of the circuit has made it a ubiquitous real-world example of a chaotic system, leading some to declare it "a paradigm for chaos".69
[Instrumental]
Phase III – Black Hole Era
State Orbits of the Wang Four-Wing Chaotic System The slave system is described by the controlled Wang dynamics.70
TEXT:
In 10 to the power of 43 years: Black holes will dominate the universe. They will slowly evaporate via Hawking radiation.71 A black hole with a mass of around 1 solar mass will vanish in around 2 times 10 to the power of 64 years. As the lifetime of a black hole is proportional to the cube of its mass, more massive black holes take longer to decay. A supermassive black hole with a mass of 100 billion solar masses will evaporate in around 2 times 10 to the power of 93 years.72
Later still, larger black holes of up to 100 trillion solar masses may form during the collapse of superclusters of galaxies. Even these would evaporate over this timescale. Though largest black holes in the universe are predicted to continue to grow.73 The hole then provides a temporary source of light during the general darkness of the Black Hole Era.74
In 10 to the power of 100 years (or 1 googol years): After all the black holes have evaporated (and after all the ordinary matter made of protons has disintegrated, if protons are unstable), the universe will be nearly empty. Photons, baryons, neutrinos, electrons, and positrons will fly from place to place, hardly ever encountering each other. Gravitationally, the universe will be dominated by dark matter, electrons, and positrons (not protons).75
By this era, with only very diffuse matter remaining, activity in the universe will have tailed off dramatically (compared with previous eras), with very low energy levels and very large time scales. Other low-level annihilation events will also take place, albeit very slowly. The universe now reaches an extremely low-energy state.76
Heat Death of the Universe
Image: Three Body trajectory example.77
TEXT:
The heat death of the universe (also known as the Big Chill or Big Freeze)78,79 is a hypothesis on the ultimate fate of the universe, which suggests the universe will evolve to a state of no thermodynamic free energy and will, therefore, be unable to sustain processes that increase entropy. Heat death does not imply any particular absolute temperature; it only requires that temperature differences or other processes may no longer be exploited to perform work. In the language of physics, this is when the universe reaches thermodynamic equilibrium.
The result would inevitably be a state of universal rest and death, if the universe were finite and left to obey existing laws. But it is impossible to conceive a limit to the extent of matter in the universe; and therefore, science points rather to an endless progress, through an endless space, of action involving the transformation of potential energy into palpable motion and hence into heat, than to a single finite mechanism, running down like a clock, and stopping forever.80
Postscript
Johann Sebastian Bach Sinfonia 7 in E minor, BWV 793
TEXT:
The cosmos is a cold and indifferent place,
unfriendly to human aims and principles.
It provides no foundation for our hopes and dreams,
but instead, is a dark and empty void.
Nihilism is the only reasonable conclusion when confronted with the true nature of reality.
...A place of nothingness
…non-possession
and…non-attachment
…which is the total end of death and decay.81
After death the universe reappears somewhere else.
After death the universe does not reappear.
After death the universe both does and does not reappear.
After death the universe neither does nor does not reappear.82
References
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Since we have assumed a maximum scale of gravitational binding – for instance, superclusters of galaxies – black hole formation eventually comes to an end in our model, with masses of up to 1014M☉ ... the timescale for black holes to radiate away all their energy ranges ... to 10109 years for black holes of up to 1014M☉.
74 Adams, Fred; Laughlin, Greg (1999).
75 Adams, Fred; Laughlin, Greg (1997).
76 Ibid.
77 Fizell, Z. (2022, May 30). Use Python to Create Three-Body Orbits. Towards Data Science. https://towardsdatascience.com/use-python-to-create-three-body-orbits-329ffb5b2627
78 WMAP – Fate of the Universe, WMAP's Universe, NASA. Accessed online July 17, 2008. https://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_fate.html
79 Dyer, Alan (2007-07-24). Insiders: Space. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. pp. 40–41. ISBN 978-1-4169-3860-6.
80 Thomson, Sir William (5 March 1862). "On the Age of the Sun's Heat". Macmillan's Magazine. Vol. 5. pp. 388–93. https://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/on_the_age_of_the_suns_heat.html
81 The culmination of the path that the Buddha taught was nirvana, "a place of nothingness…non-possession and…non-attachment…[which is] the total end of death and decay."
Pasanno, Ajahn; Amaro, Ajahn (October 2009). "Knowing, Emptiness and the Radiant Mind" (PDF). Forest Sangha Newsletter (88): 5. Archived (PDF) from the original on 12 June 2018. Retrieved 24 June 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20180612141202/http://www.fsnewsletter.amaravati.org/pdf/FSN_88_October_2009.pdf
82 Modified from Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta: To Vacchagotta on Fire. Translated by Bhikkhu, Thanissaro. 1997. Archived from the original on 6 June 2019. Retrieved 24 June 2019 – via https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.072.than.html.
The Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta records a conversation between the Buddha and an individual named Vaccha that further elaborates on this. In the sutta, Vaccha asks the Buddha to confirm one of the following, with respect to the existence of the Buddha after death:
After death a Buddha reappears somewhere else;
After death a Buddha does not reappear;
After death a Buddha both does and does not reappear;
After death a Buddha neither does nor does not reappear.