The Melancholy of Infinite Space (1996)

Geoffrey Landis , the writer of the subject article, may be known to some HN readers as a science fiction author. One of his SF stories, and one of my favorites in recent times, is available for free on the web. See &quot;The Long Chase&quot;, available here:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lightspeedmagazine.com&#x2F;fiction&#x2F;the-long-chase&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lightspeedmagazine.com&#x2F;fiction&#x2F;the-long-chase&#x2F;</a>

&quot;The Earth has no memory for the dead-ends of evolution. In a few hundred thousand years glaciers would grind our works and our bones into gravel, would grind the gravel into sand, and in a few hundred million years the movement of continents erase the last of any trace of our brief existence, save perhaps for a handful of deeply-buried and enigmatic fossils.&quot;<p>This brings up a question I have often wondered about: do we really know we are the first intelligent conceptual life to do things like use tools and language on this planet?<p>If let&#x27;s say a dinosaur reached the level of stone or bronze age civilization would anything be left other than... well... a couple enigmatic fossils that are easy to dismiss?<p>I doubt a massive high tech civilization like ours could come and go and leave no trace, but what about something much smaller scale?

If the amount of computation that can be done is finite, then subjective time is also finite. (And vice-versa if the amount of computation is infinite.)<p>What does infinite time mean in a universe where nothing happens?<p>I hope I live to see a grand unified theory of physics which explains how space-time emerges from the quantum scale, but also how consciousness emerges from computation. Maybe in the future, when these theories are developed, we can have infinite consciousness, infinite subjective time.<p>I also acknowledge that I may be confused entirely and the previous paragraph has no meaning.

Please note that this was written before it was discovered that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Now that that is known, it is possible that things could end much, much more quickly as that expansion accelerates to the point that galaxies, stars, and eventually atoms are ripped apart.<p>See <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.vanderbilt.edu&#x2F;2015&#x2F;06&#x2F;new-model-of-cosmic-stickiness-favors-%E2%80%9Cbig-rip%E2%80%9D-demise-of-universe&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.vanderbilt.edu&#x2F;2015&#x2F;06&#x2F;new-model-of-cosmic-stick...</a> for more.

A very good piece.<p>But it reminds me of an irony of science communication. Landis is right that &quot;Life is not made of protoplasm&quot; but it is nonetheless true that modern science has found the <i>Élan vital</i> (vital impetus) that naturalistic writers often claim doesn&#x27;t exist.<p>That impetus is free energy -- what Schrödinger called &quot;negative entropy&quot;. The melancholy is that life is not <i>made of</i> the <i>Élan vital</i>, but consumes it. And it seems there is only a finite amount.

It is interesting that Mr. Landis mentions entropy (in Thermodynamical sense I hope). I have always wondered what it means here, in this solar system. Assuming the solar system has negligible energy flowing in, what does it mean when life on earth is reducing entropy in this system? We are tipping the balance by assimilating atoms in a more orderly fashion with each birth. This means something bad is happening somewhere close-by. ;-(

My intuition says that if life was possible in the infinite tail of time that has yet to come, then the probability of finding ourselves in a period close to the beginning of the universe would be zero. But then again, we are dealing with infinity here, so intuition is probably wrong.

Its always so awesome when people think so far out. I&#x27;m still trying to get of bed. His web site is so retro, it&#x27;s just cool x 10. :-)