Civilizations at the End of Time: Iron Stars

• Vi Hart (Math) link — I'm amazed nobody else listed her. She's my favourite math channel on YouTube (even though 3Blue1Brown is more technically informative, I just love Vi Hart's sense of style). • Isaac Arthur (Space / Futurism / Speculative Science) — link — The graphics are pretty cheeseball, but the some of the topics he explores are fascinating. I recommend starting with this video • Aerotwist (Frontend / JS) — link — Paul Lewis works (or used to work?) on the Chrome team, and is an alum of the (good) HTTP203 podcast • LunchBox Sessions (Industrial hydraulic systems) — link — The videos are just screencasts of schematic simulations, but the presenter (Carl) has a good level of enthusiasm. (Disclosure — I contributed to these videos as an editor / software dev.)

This brings to my mind Isaac Arthur's lecture "Civilizations at the End of Time: Iron Stars" [1]. He posits that a Kardashev Scale 3 civilization might use a galactic black hole to survive 10^100 entropic years of what he calls the "Black Hole Epoch". Hearing about this possible giant blob of plasma orbiting our galactic black hole makes me wonder if he and his team can come up with plausible explanations that the plasma is actually some construct of such a civilization, like perhaps a "construction site generator" as they're building their "bunker against entropic time" amongst the black hole. The really neat part of the lecture is towards the end, in his description of time winding down into thermodynamic equilibirum, a Boltzmann Brain fluctuating out of the equilibrium's randomness, and restarting the universe with another Big Bang. That's fascinatingly close to universe origin stories in Abrahamic religions, and echoes Hindu religious cosmological cyclicality. One aspect I didn't see touched upon is the possibility that our universe and we are simulations inside that Boltzmann Brain. And then there are the arguments that we do not want Boltzmann Brains [2]. Now if only the religious adherents in all our nations duking it out against other humans for not having the "right" religion could turn their cognitive surplus (poured into their religion) outwards to helping illuminate more upon these near-metaphysical physics challenges, we might actually get somewhere. After all, o

My go-to entry point for exploring those kinds of questions was Isaac Arthur. He goes into the Kardashev scale [1], dying Earth [2], dying stars [3], farming black holes [4], and going past iron stars [5]. A Boltzmann Brain's description bears remarkable similarity to the Judeo-Christian concept of God before time begins, and has been fertile ground for ruminations [6], though none with any verifiable claims backing them in our current knowledge of physics [7]. Now if we could only restructure our implementation of capitalism to be pinned to advancements towards resolving physics questions to survive those kinds of timescales and challenges instead of locked down to a single planet's worth of baryonic matter and cognitive capacity... [1] link [2] link [3] link [4] link [5] this video [6] link [7] link

Mandatory Isaar Arthur links: - Civilizations at the End of Time: Iron Stars [1] - Civilizations at the End of Time: Black Hole Farming [2] - Boltzman Brains and the Anthropic Principle [3] [4] [1]: this video [2]: link [3]: link [4]: link

Isaac Arthur explores ideas like these in his videos / podcasts, I enjoy listening to it. Actually he has a whole series on Civilizations at the End of Time.[0] [0] this video