Is the Omega Point Ironic Science?
Frank Tipler (standing), inventor of the Omega Point theory, in a recent debate at the Oxford Union.
HOBOKEN, NOVEMBER 29, 2024. I coined the phrase “scientific theology” in The End of Science to describe science-y speculation about the end, in both senses, of the cosmos. One practitioner is physicist Freeman Dyson, whose “principle of maximum diversity” I mention in a recent column, “The Election and the Problem of Evil.” An even bolder scientific theologian is physicist Frank Tipler. I love telling my students about Tipler’s Omega Point theory, which says the universe will eventually turn into a gigantic computer with godlike powers. (I don’t tell my students that in 1981 I became the Omega Point.) Tipler lays out his theory in The Physics of Immortality (1994). He is still working on the theory, and he insists in the Q&A below that it is hard, falsifiable physics, not “theology” or “ironic science.” You be the judge. – John Horgan
QUESTION: Sabine Hossenfelder, among others, says theoretical physics has stagnated. What do you think?
ANSWER: I agree. And I agree with Lee Smolin and Eric Weinstein that the main reason it has is due to the monopoly String Theory has over attempts to quantize gravity (and the resulting censorship [p. 157] in STEM). I think the quantum gravity problem was solved in the 1960’s by John Wheeler, Bryce DeWitt, Richard Feynman, and Steven Weinberg. I use their version of quantum gravity in my Omega Point Theory, and it works fine, giving consistent results and testable predictions.
QUESTION: What was the original inspiration for your Omega Point hypothesis?
ANSWER: Freeman Dyson’s 1979 paper “Time Without End” on how life could survive forever in an open universe. I wondered if life could survive forever in a closed universe that ended in a final singularity. I realized that in such a universe, life would have to engulf and gain control over the entire universe if it were to survive. I also realized that this would be possible only if there were no event horizons, which in turn meant that in Roger Penrose c-boundary topology, the final singularity would have to be a single point, rather than a three-sphere as generally thought. So, I called the resulting theory “The Omega Point Theory.”
QUESTION: How has your hypothesis evolved, if at all, since you wrote The Physics of Immortality?
ANSWER: The main mistake I made in Physics of Immortality was thinking that the Universe would accelerate in its contracting phase rather than in its expanding phase. I knew when I wrote the book, and I emphasized in the book [p. 465], that the Universe had to have an acceleration period. I also pointed out that the acceleration would look like it was due to Dark Energy (a cosmological constant). Alas, most of my predictions were wrong because I stupidly thought the acceleration would occur during universal contraction. The worst mistake of my life! I could have, and should have, predicted the current acceleration of the Universe, which was observed shortly after my book was published.
I say I was stupid because to get acceleration in the contracting phase, I had to assume non-minimal coupling between the Higgs field and the gravitational field. What nonsense! Every sane person knows that gravity only minimally couples with matter.
I’ve since discovered that the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics has a natural — minimally coupled! — mechanism to generate the Dark Energy that allows life in the far future to control the acceleration, thereby enabling future life to engulf the entire Universe. This control, allowing life from a single source to engulf the universe, is why universal acceleration is necessary, as I pointed out in 1994 in Physics of Immortality.
Another thing I’ve learned since my book was published is that I can now prove that the Omega Point Theory follows from the laws of physics. In my book, I merely investigated the consequences of intelligent life surviving to the end of time.
QUESTION: In The End of Science, I knocked the Omega Point as untestable speculation, “bunk,” “ironic science.” Why am I wrong?
ANSWER: Because the Theory is a consequence of the known laws of physics. If the laws are correct, then all their consequences are also correct. You yourself argued in The End of Science that the laws of physics are correct, since if they were not, we would not be at the End of Science.
The Omega Point Theory is a consequence of general relativity, combined with three other laws even more confirmed empirically. Let me now give you a short outline of the proof. The full mathematics is in my 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper.
First, Hawking showed that black holes evaporate, and further, he showed that, were a black hole to evaporate completely, unitarity would be violated. Black holes certainly exist — we've discovered thousands — and were the universe to expand (or accelerate) forever, then all of these black holes would evaporate to completion, thus violating unitarity. But unitarity is a fundamental, empirically tested law which CANNOT be violated. Therefore, no black hole can evaporate to completion. According to general relativity, the only way that can happen is for the universe to come to an end before any black hole can completely evaporate. Again, according to general relativity, the only way the universe can come to an end is for the universe to end in a final singularity.
Now Bekenstein proved that his Bekenstein Bound (which is basically [p. 407] the Uncertainty Principle made fully relativistic and stated in the language of information theory) implies that were there to be event horizons at the final singularity, the entropy of the universe would have to approach zero. But the Second Law of Thermodynamics says the entropy of the universe cannot decrease, and the entropy of the universe is currently far above zero. Thus, event horizons cannot exist. A mathematical consequence of there being no event horizons is for the final c-boundary to be a single point, the Omega Point. Finally, I have shown in my 2005 paper that intelligent life must be present all the way into the Omega Point, guiding the universe to eliminate event horizons.
QED.
Furthermore, the Omega Point Theory has very interesting testable consequences. The IT billionaire Peter Thiel gave me money to build an apparatus to test one of them.
First, note that this future intelligent life will have to diverge in intelligence in order to survive. Thus, their existence is equivalent to the creation of a Universal Computer (a Universal Turing Machine is an example of such). Further note that almost all the computation will occur when the universe is smaller than the Planck length. Thus, we must check if Wheeler-DeWitt quantum gravity works, and that we can use classical physics on large scales all the way into the singularity. David Deutsch has correctly pointed out that quantum mechanics is necessarily Many-Worlds, which you consider “bullshit.” Were you correct about “bullshit,” you would be wrong about The End of Science, because there would have to be a correct theory that would replace quantum mechanics.
I have shown that Many-Worlds at the macrolevel has experimental consequences. Since the wave function is NOT a probability (frequentist) amplitude, but instead a relative density of the universes in the multiverse amplitude (see my 2014 PNAS paper for the proof), I have used this fact, and the fact that the identical versions of ourselves cooperate, to deduce a rate of pattern approach formula for the Double Slit Experiment. I have compared the formula with the observations, and it works! I have also used Many-Worlds to deduce a reaction rate formula for quantum chemistry.
Bottom line: Wheeler-DeWitt with Many-Worlds shows that if the universe is close to flat (as it is observed to be), then classical physics can be used arbitrarily near the singularity. We can’t experiment on the final singularity, but we can observe the initial singularity. When the Bekenstein Bound is combined with the SM, it shows quantum mechanics forces the universe to be homogeneous and isotropic with the only allowed field to be a self-dual SM SU(2)L field, which would generate only matter, no antimatter. You are thus correct about cosmic inflation.
If the SU(2)L field survived to the present day, the Cosmic Background Radiation would be mainly SU(2)L. [Horgan: The “L” of SU(2)L should be in subscript, which my platform doesn’t allow.] There is evidence for this in the Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays, and in the PLANCK observations [p.41] of the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich Effect, but Thiel gave me money to observe the CBR for the SU(2)L directly. Here’s a photo of the apparatus:
Here’s a graph of the expected power vs. frequency, the top graph showing standard theory (all-photon CBR) and the bottom graph showing the same with a mainly SU(2)L CBR.
Finally, here’s what we see:
We’ve seen the same signal every time we’ve observed the CBR.
So, the Omega Point Theory is testable, and it’s looking good for the Omega Point Theory!
QUESTION: What’s your take on recent advances in artificial intelligence? Do they represent a step toward the Omega Point? Are you worried AI might destroy us?
ANSWER: Kurtzweil and I predicted that human level AIs would appear by 2030. We’ll see if we’re correct. Super-human level AIs are necessary in the far future, because humans at the lowest level of implementation cannot exist in a universe smaller than the Planck length. Such AIs could exterminate humanity if they wished to do so. But I’m not worried, because they will know the laws of physics, and thus will know that they can resurrect us whenever they wish (details in Physics of Immortality). So, they will not regard wiping us out as extermination, but rather as putting us on ice until they’ve sorted things out. If you kill someone, but can resurrect him, you are morally obligated to do so.
QUESTION: Are we living in a simulation right now?
ANSWER: Of course. “Living in a simulation” is just another way of saying that we are living in a reality governed by physical laws, which are determined by a Programmer. The only question is, what is the complexity of the Programmer? Since the Programmer is the cosmological singularity, “His” complexity is infinite, Cantor’s Absolute Infinity.
QUESTION: If we live forever in the Omega Point, how will we pass the time? Won’t eternity get boring? What’s your utopia?
ANSWER: The complexity of the universe diverges to infinity as the Omega Point is approached. With an infinite number of things to do, we won’t get bored. Like Deutsch, I hate the idea of a static utopia. The only good society is one which is ever advancing. We are at the very Beginning of Infinity. The Omega Point is Infinity!
Further Reading:
Freeman Dyson's Disturbing Scientific Theology
The Election and the Problem of Evil
Math, God and the Problem of Evil
Physicists Teleport Bullshit Through “Wormhole”!