Piero Scaruffi

These are excerpts and elaborations from my book "The Nature of Consciousness"

The Omega Point The "omega point theory" of the universe advanced by the US physicist Frank Tipler was meant as a rigorous mathematical proof of the existence of an omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent god. Tipler even calculated the likelihood that every human being be eventually resurrected, and conjured up a physical model of life in heaven, hell and purgatory, all based on Information Theory, Quantum Mechanics and Relativity Theory. His basic point is that life is “information coding” preserved by natural selection: a being is alive if it encodes information and such information is preserved over time by natural selection. Given this definition of life, it is possible to compute how much energy is sufficient and necessary to extend this process till the very end of time in a closed universe. Furthermore, a simulated universe is, for all purposes, a universe, and its inhabitants are, for all purposes, as real as us, because there is no way that the simulated beings can realize they are simply being simulated. We may well be just that: simulations inside a computer. Virtual reality is no less real than actual reality, because there is no way to distinguish one from the other. In a sense, only virtual reality exists. Tipler calculates the maximum amount of information needed to simulate brains and entire humans, by basing his conjectures on the Bekenstein bounds (the upper limit on information density, according to Quantum Theory). The “omega point” is the final singularity of the history of a  closed universe, the point of infinite information, which is neither space nor time nor matter, but is beyond all of these and experiences the whole of universal history all at once. Tipler believes that our universe is a Taub universe, a universe which, after the expansion phase is over, will start contracting at different rates in different directions, thus leading to an oblate spheroid shape.  In such a contracting universe, temperature will be higher in the “contracted” direction and the difference of temperature between that direction and the others will generate energy. The fact that a closed universe must be in an infinite singularity actually means that infinite energy will be produced. In a Taub universe the differential collapse becomes a source of free energy, which life can use to survive forever. This source of energy will be to eternal life what the Sun is to life on Earth. The finite singularity of the universe and eternal life happen to coincide…   Back to the beginning of the chapter "The Physics Of Life" | Back to the index of all chapters