Seems that Frank Tipler's theory of the ultimate future put forth in the Physics of Immortality is becoming the prevailing model for forward thinking theoretical physicists.
Excerpt below.
In the distant future, billions to trillions of years from now, the stars will exhaust their nuclear fuel, the oceans will freeze, the universe will turn dark and temperatures will plunge to almost zero. It appears inevitable that all intelligent life will perish when the universe itself freezes over.
This possibility of "unyielding despair" was explored by the mathematician Bertrand Russell, who wrote, in one of the most depressing passages in the English language, that "no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought or feeling, can preserve a life beyond the grave... all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system; and the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins..."
Today, we believe that space arks might one day preserve life after the death of the Sun in five billion years. But can you build a space ark to escape the death of the universe itself?
The only possible way to avoid the death of the universe is to leave. Perhaps civilisations billions of years ahead of ours will harness enough energy to punch a hole in space and escape, in a hyper-dimensional space ark, to a new universe.
Although it seems far-fetched, even preposterous, physicists have seriously considered this possibility using the known laws of physics. Einstein's equations, for example, allow for the possibility of "Einstein-Rosen bridges" connecting two parallel universes. (Imagine two horizontal parallel sheets of paper connected by a thin vertical tube.)
The energy necessary to create such a "wormhole" connecting two universes is truly immense - the Planck energy, or 1019 billion electron volts (a quadrillion times the energy of our largest atom smasher).
In desperation, an advanced civilisation might create huge banks of laser beams and atom smashers to create the unbelievably intense temperatures, energy and densities necessary to open up holes in space and leave the universe.
Calculations show that these gigantic machines must be the size of star systems, but this might be possible for civilisations billions of years ahead of ours. Unfortunately, some preliminary calculations show that the wormhole might only be microscopic in size. If so, an advanced civilisation might resort to shooting molecular-sized robots, called "nanobots", through the wormhole.
Once on the other side, these nanobots would then create huge DNA factories to grow clones and replicas of their creators. Since they would contain the entire database of their civilisation, they would use this to resurrect it in another universe.
Although the physical bodies of these individuals will die when the universe freezes over, their genetic twins will live on, so that their civilisation, like a Phoenix, may flourish again.
As incredible as these scenarios are, they are consistent with the known laws of physics and biology.
So, when contemplating the question raised by Huxley in 1863, our true role in the universe might be to spread the precious germ of intelligent life throughout it and, one day, to spread the seed of life by leaving a dying universe for a warmer one.
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