Why The Laws of Physics Imply the OPT
Astrophysical black holes almost certainly exist, but Hawking has shown
that if black holes are allowed to exist for unlimited proper time, then
they will completely evaporate, and unitarity will be violated. Thus
unitarity requires that the universe must cease to exist after finite
proper time, which implies that the universe has the spatial topology of a
three-sphere. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says the amount of entropy
in the universe cannot decrease, but it can be shown that the amount of
entropy already in the CBR will eventually contradict the Bekenstein Bound
near the final singularity unless there are no event horizons, since in the
presence of horizons the Bekenstein Bound implies the universal entropy
S is less that a constant times the radius of the universe squared,
and general relativity requires the radius to go to zero at the final
singularity. The absence of event horizons by definition means that the
universe's future c-boundary is a single point, call it the Omega
Point. MacCallum has shown that a three-sphere closed universe with a
single point future c-boundary is of measure zero in initial data space.
Barrow has shown that the evolution of a three-sphere closed universe into
its final singularity is chaotic. Yorke has shown that a chaotic physical
system is likely to evolve into a measure zero state if and only if its
control parameters are intelligently manipulated. Thus life (which near
the final state, is really collectively intelligent computers) almost
certainly must be present arbitrarily close to the final
singularity in order for the known laws of physics to be mutually
consistent at all times. Misner has shown in effect that event horizon
elimination requires an infinite number of distinct manipulations, so an
infinite amount of information must be processed between now and the final
singularity. The amount of information stored at any given time diverges
to infinity as the Omega Point is approached, since the entropy diverges to
infinity there, implying divergence of the complexity of the system that
must be understood to be controlled.
Life transferring its information to a medium that can withstand the
arbitrarily high temperatures near the final singularity has several
implications: first, (Omega-naught - 1) is between a millionth and a
thousandth, where Omega-naught is the density parameter, and second, the
Standard Model Higgs boson mass must be 220 plus or minus 20 GeV. The
details are in The Physics of Immortality.