Post by dividavi on Jan 23, 2018 1:11:00 GMT
There are three that come to mind. There was the novel "Starmaker" written in the 1930s by Olaf Stapledon. It's basically a travelogue/future history of our universe with Stapledon describing the many varieties of life. It's hard science fiction in that there is no faster than light transport system. There are species that accomplish interstellar travel but Homo Sapiens isn't one of them. Our universe (if that's the correct term) burns out after 30 billion years or so (if I remember correctly) and the Starmaker goes on to build other realms.
The second is the "Last Question", a short story by Isaac Asimov. A succession of increasingly advanced computers is asked the question, "Can entropy be reversed?" The universe ceases ten trillion years after its birth in this story leaving the ultimate computer to ponder the question in hyperspace.
The third story is the novel "Origin" by Stephen Baxter. Like Asimov's "Last Question", there are no space aliens but there is FTL transport. Artificially generated stars are still burning ten trillion (10^14) years in the future. Even after the protons have decayed away, there are still cloud beings composed of "immense wispy atoms" lumbering slowly in the dark.
So how long can the universe (and life) survive? My own feeling is that there will be nothing left in 30 billion years. Am I the only one who feels that Baxter was a little bit influenced by Asimov? The life of a proton is at least 10^33 years. What are Baxter's "immense wispy atoms" made of?
The second is the "Last Question", a short story by Isaac Asimov. A succession of increasingly advanced computers is asked the question, "Can entropy be reversed?" The universe ceases ten trillion years after its birth in this story leaving the ultimate computer to ponder the question in hyperspace.
The third story is the novel "Origin" by Stephen Baxter. Like Asimov's "Last Question", there are no space aliens but there is FTL transport. Artificially generated stars are still burning ten trillion (10^14) years in the future. Even after the protons have decayed away, there are still cloud beings composed of "immense wispy atoms" lumbering slowly in the dark.
So how long can the universe (and life) survive? My own feeling is that there will be nothing left in 30 billion years. Am I the only one who feels that Baxter was a little bit influenced by Asimov? The life of a proton is at least 10^33 years. What are Baxter's "immense wispy atoms" made of?
