Volume 1, Issue 1 
1st Quarter, 2006


The Physics of Immortality, Threats to Terran Society, & Self-Replicating Nanotechnology, and An Exchange Between Frank Tipler and Ray Kurzweil Regarding Ways to Avoid an End to the Universe

Frank Tipler, Ph.D. and Ray Kurzweil, Ph.D.

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Interestingly, we can go further than that. This process, proton plus an electron, goes into a neutrino. Anti-neutrino is also allowed, because as I've already told you, the left-hand side, p + e, has B minus L = zero. On the other side, a neutrino has +1 unit of lepton number, -1 unit of lepton number. Add the two, you will find again you get zero. So zero lepton number on the right hand side. Zero B minus L on the other side. Zero equals zero perfectly good I think. So this process is also allowed.

Let's think about the implications of being able to create a directed neutrino beam by annihilation of matter into the neutrinos. If you can do this, convert it into a beam of Tiplerneutrinos, you actually have an ultimate rocket. What do you need for a rocket? The exhaust gas must attain as high a velocity as possible. You can't do better than light speed. Neutrinos have so little mass, they are very close to light speed.

In a rocket, one of the problems you run into is that the exhaust gases tend to burn things up. That's one of the reasons we never developed a nuclear rocket. Dyson was one of the people working on such a device in the 1950s. We never developed one because the exhaust gas would be highly radioactive and also very hot. It would vaporize anything it hit.

Think about a rocket launch from Cape Kennedy. The exhaust gases from rockets are so vast that people must stand back a mile from the launching range. But if you have an exhaust that - like neutrinos - is not interacting, the rocket could esentially go off in this room. It would have no effect on anybody. That would give you, in other words, this process and an ultimate rocket.

The other process also should be allowed by the standard model, via this electroweak quantum tunneling, to provide the ultimate energy source.

I'm going to make a prediction. In this century, which is close to Ray Kurzweil's estimate of 2040, we will have a quantum computer. The basic barrier to making the process that I have described is essentially the same barrier that is preventing us from making a practical quantum computer, which I think everyone is aware is going to be a vastly more powerful computer than a classic computer.

I'm also going to predict that, in this century, we will obtain the ultimate power source, the ultimate rocket that I have described, artifical intelligence, nanotechnology, human downloads, and of course as I've already mentioned, quantum computers. I'm going to argue that human downloads and artificial intelligences are going to use this power to expand off the Earth and eventually gain control of the entire universe.

I've thrown in a word here none of you beside myself have ever heard of: unitarity. Unitarity requires it. It's one of the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics. I will argue that unitarity is going to conclude with: If the laws be for us, who can be against us?

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