For those of you who are not familiar with the Omega Point Theory, here's an intro, If you're familiar, you can skip this first paragraph and go to my question. -BJK
From Transhumanity.com
"The Omega Point Theory in a nutshell": intelligent beings of a far future epoch close to the gravitational collapse of the universe (the so called Big Crunch) may develop the capability to steer the collapse along a specific mode (Taub collapse) with unlimited subjective time, energy, and computational power available to them before reaching the final singularity. Having done so, they may wish to restore to consciousness all sentient beings of the past, perhaps through a "brute force" computational emulation of the past history of the universe. So after death we may wake up in a simulated environment with many of the features assigned to the afterlife world by the major religions. We are using a weak "may", but Prof. Tipler thinks that there is plenty of evidence for the Omega Point Theory in today's universe.
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I've never been to gungho about Tipler's Omega point theory. I do not know enough about physics to give it a fair assessment, however, my instinct is that he's latching this idea onto some sort of "higher power".
His recent Transhumanity article may have wabling on the theory... or am I reading this wrong? It's hard to make heads or tails of this. - BJK
Credit: Transhumanity.com
Tipler said:
"I SHOULD have predicted acceleration in the expanding phase, since the existence of a net number of baryons in the universe implies the Higgs field would not be in its true vacuum, where we would expect the positive cosmological constant (which is the mechanism for acceleration in the collapsing phase of universal history) would be exactly cancelled.
So, if the observed acceleration were to continue forever, the Omega Point Theory would be refuted. But the expansion of life to engulf the universe is EXACTLY what is required to cancel the positive cosmological constant (a.k.a. the Dark Energy)"
Tipler says:
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me." Criticism is the driving force of science. Much of the criticism has consisted of insults, and hence not useful. But my improvements in the Omega Point Theory, describved above, are due in large part to technical criticisms. My explanation of the Dark Matter and Dark Energy, and the simple experiment to test it, derive from criticisms I received from Gordon Kane, a professor of physics at the University of Michigan, after I gave a seminar at the University of Michigan a few years ago.
What I was unprepared for was the hostile "stone throwing" I received at Tulane University. I was actually formally tried for heresy (this word was not used by the panel convened to try me. Instead, I was told that I "didn't think like everyone else in the department"). I was not fired --- it's difficult to fire a tenured full professor, especially for unorthodox thinking, exactly what tenure is supposed to protect. But my salary was frozen: since my work was "worthless", it is clear to University officials that I should receive no raise. So now my pay is some $30,000 less than the Tulane full professor average, almost at the level of a starting assistant professor at Tulane, and definitely less than the assistant professor at a place like Cal Tech.
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