Word: cosmically
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...laying a glove on us, and I see no reason to suppose that doors won't open onto even stranger notions in the century to come. So perhaps we can glimpse a few shafts of light, shining under doors as yet unopened, that promise to refine our predictions of cosmic destiny...
...empty space that initially expanded at a velocity much faster than that of light (see "Will We Discover Another Universe?", in this issue). Cosmologists take inflation seriously because it resolves problems that bedeviled older versions of the Big Bang, but inflation also has implications for the study of cosmic destiny. Among them is that the force that drove the inflationary spasm, sometimes tagged with the Greek letter lambda after its designation in Einstein's general-relativity equations, might not have subsided altogether back when the inflationary hiccup ended. Instead, it might still be there, lurking in empty space and urging...
Perhaps the most intriguing unknown, however, concerns the cosmic role played by intelligent life itself. As the physicist Freeman Dyson notes, "It is impossible to calculate in detail the long-range future of the universe without including the effects of life and intelligence." Much of the earth has been transformed, for better and worse, by the presence here of an intelligent species capable of manipulating its environment for its own benefit...
Similarly, advanced civilizations in the far future might be able to melt down stars and even entire galaxies to make gigantic campfires, or otherwise tilt the long-term odds in their favor. Life in the waning cosmic twilight might be jejune, but it could last a long time. Consider the marshaled resources of all the natural and artificial intelligences in the observable universe over the next, say, trillion years. Which would you bet on to prevail--that level of smarts or a claim, based on 19th century thermodynamics, that they're doomed...
...there anything in this universe--except perhaps the mind of a rebellious teenager--that is stranger than the bright cutting edge of science? We try to wrap our imagination around the radical ideas that modern scientists take for granted, but we're left breathless. Cosmic strings that snap like rubber bands! Parallel universes that sprout like bubbles! Wormholes! Gravity waves! Particles that vibrate not in three or four dimensions...