Baxter, Stephen Xeelee 02 Timelike Infinity

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* * *
Shira talked to them of Eugene Wigner, and of the von Neumann catastrophe.
Like the alive-dead condition of Schr�dinger's cat, events remained in a state of unreality until observed
by a conscious entity. But each act of observation merely added another layer of potentiality to the core
events, itself unrealized until observed in turn.
The chains of quantum functions, in Wigner's view, extended to infinity in an unending chain, an infinite
regress.
"Thus, the paradox of Wigner's friend," Shira said.
Michael shook his head impatiently. "But this is pure philosophical debate," he said. "Wigner himself
believed that the regress was not infinite... that the chain of wave functions terminates as soon as a
conscious mind makes an observation."
"That is one view," Shira said quietly. "But there are others..."
Shira described theparticipatory universe.
Life intelligent life was, under this hypothesis, essential for the very existence of the universe. Imagine
a myriad box-cat-friend-Wigner chains of quantum functions, all extending through time, without end.
"Constantly," Shira said, "life consciousness is calling the universe into existence by the very act of
observing it."
Consciousness was like an immense, self-directed eye, a recursive design developed by the universe to
invoke its own being.
And if this was true, the goal of consciousness, of life, said Shira, must be to gather and organize
data all data, everywhere to observe and actualize all events. For without actualization there could be
no reality.
Arising from a million chance beginnings, like the stirring of the chemical soup of Earth's ancient seas, life
had spread was continuing to spread and to observe, to gather and record data using every resource
available.
"We live in an era somewhere near the start of the contact between species, on an interstellar scale,"
Shira said. "There is war, death, destruction. Genocide. But one can, from a godlike perspective, regard
it all as interfacing as a sharing, a pooling, of information.
"Ultimately, surely, the squabbling species of our day will resolve their childish differences differences
of special prejudice, of narrow interests, of inadequate perception and move together, perhaps under the
leadership of the Xeelee, toward the ultimate goal of life: the gathering and recording of all data, the
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observation and invocation of the universe itself."
More and more resources would be devoted to this goal not just in extent, as life spread from its
myriad points of origin, but in depth and scope. At last all the energy sources available for exploitation,
from the gravitational potential of galactic superclusters down to the zero-point energy inherent in space
itself, would be suborned to the great project of consciousness.
Shira described the future of the universe.
In a few billion years a blink of cosmic time Earth's Sun would leave the main sequence of stars, its
outer layers ballooning, swallowing the remains of the planets. Humanity would move on, of course,
abandoning the old in favor of the new. More stars would form, to replace those that had failed and
died... but the formation rate of new stars was already declining exponentially, with a half-life of a few
billion years.
After about a thousand billion years, no more stars would form. The darkened galaxies would continue
to turn, but chance collisions and close encounters would take their cumulative toll. Planets would
"evaporate" from their parent suns, and stars would evaporate from their galaxies. Those stars remaining
in the time-ravaged star systems would lose energy, steadily, by gravitational radiation, and coalesce at
last into immense, galactic-scale black holes.
And those holes themselves would coalesce, into holes on the scales of galactic clusters and
superclusters; from all across the universe the timelines would converge, merging at last into the great
singularities.
But life would prevail, said Shira, continuing to exploit with ever-increasing efficiency the universe's
residual sources of energy. Such as the dim shining of the star-corpses, kept at a few degrees above
absolute zero by the slow decay of protons.
And there would still be work to be done.
Black hole evaporation would continue, with the eventual shrinking and disappearance of event horizons
even on the scale of galaxies and clusters of galaxies; and naked singularities would emerge into the
spreading sweep of spacetime.
Perhaps the universe could not exist beyond the formation of a naked singularity. Perhaps the formation
of such a flaw would cause the cessation of time and space, the ending of being.
"And perhaps," Shira said, "life's purpose, in the later stages of the evolution of the universe, is to
manipulate event horizons in order to prevent the formation of naked singularities."
"Ah." Parz smiled. "Another elegant idea. So our descendants might be entrained to work as Cosmic
Censors."
"Or as Cosmic Saviors," Michael said dryly.
Harry asked, sounding awed, "How do you manipulate event horizons?"
"No doubt there are lots of ways," Michael said. "But even now we can imagine some fairly crude
methods. Such as forcing black holes to merge before they get a chance to evaporate."
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"The Wigner paradox is inescapable," Shira said. The chains of unresolved quantum states would build
on and on, growing like flowers, extending into the future, until the observations of the cosmos-spanning
minds to come rested on aeon-thick layers of history, studded with the fossils of ancient events. "At last,"
Shira said, her voice steady and oddly flat, "life will cover the universe, still observing, still building the
regressing chains of quantum functions. Life will manipulate the dynamical evolution of the cosmos as a
whole. One can anticipate the pooled resources of life exploiting even the last energy resource, the sheer
energy of the expansion of spacetime itself...
"Consciousness must exist as long as the cosmos itself for without observation there can be no
actualization, no existence and further, consciousness must become coextensive with the cosmos, in
order thatall events may be observed."
Parz laughed softly, wondering. "What a vision. Girl, how old are you? You sound a thousand years
old."
But, Shira went on, the chains of quantum functions would finally merge, culminate in a final state: at the
last boundary to the universe, at timelike infinity.
"And at timelike infinity resides the Ultimate Observer," Shira said quietly. "And the last Observation will
be made "
"Yes," Parz said, "and so collapsing all the chains of quantum functions, right back through
time through the wreckage of the galaxies, down to the present and on into history, past Wigner, his
friend, the cat and its box what a charming notion this is "
"Retrospectively, the history of the universe will be actualized," Shira said."But it cannot be realized [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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