Natural Human Extinction

[Void]

In this thread I'm going to give everyone a hypothetical question, and scenario. Assuming humans will still be around thousands of years from now, do you believe that human extinction is only inevitable? Now, in this scenario, I'm not necessarily asking you if the universe is going to eventually end or not.

In this scenario, I want you to consider a few things before you give your example:

1. Humans will eventually colonize other worlds, and eventually still, even colonize space.
2. Human's can't cause their own extinction in this situation, ie. no war, no synthetic virus, none of that. In fact, in this scenario, I don't even want you to consider war with an alien species.
3. The extinction of humanity relies on natural laws; evolution, physics (and quantum mechanics), and astronomy. So God and Armageddon (judgment day) is not a possible outcome in this scenario either.

Given this, is it impossible for us as a species to continue forever? If we can, why? If we can't, then what do you believe is the defining reason why we can't exist forever (or if you need the question in other words, what eventuality can we never escape, no matter what we do)?

[Karsh]

Pretty deep discussion for an RPG board there, Void. Anyhow, I think with increased technology and firepower, someone will eventually make a mistake and blow up the world.

[Priest4hire]

The most obvious answer is the heat death/big crunch of the universe. In the former scenario the combination of a limited quantity of energy and the inexorable move towards entropy would spell the doom of mankind. The latter simply has all of spacetime and matter being crunched back into a singularity and it's difficult to see how humans would get around that little problem.

Of course, transit between universes (assuming other universes exist) could solve even these problems.

[Ges]

Someone is going to eventually invent time-travel, and then cause a rift in the space time continuum and END THE UNIVERSE.

[Void]

The most obvious answer is the heat death/big crunch of the universe. In the former scenario the combination of a limited quantity of energy and the inexorable move towards entropy would spell the doom of mankind. The latter simply has all of spacetime and matter being crunched back into a singularity and it's difficult to see how humans would get around that little problem.

Of course, transit between universes (assuming other universes exist) could solve even these problems.

Ah yes, the big Crunch. Basically a return to a chaotic universe where there are no stable particles (and eventually, nothing but the singularity, either).

Do you have any opinion about the theory that matter will some day be so sparse, that gravity will have no affect on the expansion of the universe, and it will just continue to expand?

[moogle]

You'd have to be pretty optimistic to think we'll survive the death of our planet, let alone the heat-death of the universe. I would be relatively surprised if we last more than a few more centuries. Unless, of course, we can all get our shit together before then. Ha.

[Priest4hire]

Do you have any opinion about the theory that matter will some day be so sparse, that gravity will have no affect on the expansion of the universe, and it will just continue to expand?

Seems plausible especially with the accelerating expansion of the universe. This raises all sorts of metaphysical question. Where does matter come from? Has it always existed or did it come into existence ex nihilo? Knowing the true nature of reality might go a long way to determining whether man can live on past the end of the universe.

At any rate if the universe expands forever man will eventually run out of energy. Anti-matter technology might allow using existing matter to extend our existence beyond the heat death of the universe, but not infinitely. So we're back to alternate universes then. Perhaps something like the proton pump that Asimov dreamed up. (It was a device that pumped energy from an alternate universe into this one. Featured in The Gods Themselves. Good book.)

[Atlas]

I'm going to have to agree with Priest on this one. The big crunch or an unending expansion of the universe will--unless traveling to hypothetical alternate universes is possible--be our doom.

Closer to home, though, the sun will eventually expand and either 1) destroy the earth or 2) heat the earth up to unlivable temperatures.

On the bright side, if we do escape our sun, we've still got unimaginable time to conjure up some sort of escape plan.

I really believe our species will die in the end, though. I'm optimistic, but realistically, there's no plausible chance our species will figure a way out, let alone (going beyond discussion here) escape from our self-destructive ways.

[Polygon]

I don't see why it wouldn't be possible, but certainly not plausible.

[Abominari]

Humanity will never survive to see any kind of crunch. When our sun dies, mankind will already be gone.

A tiny blip on the timeline of the universe.

[Priest4hire]

I doubt that. Interstellar travel is within our grasp even if it would be very slow. I'm pretty sure a project orion ship could make the journey. So it's not implausible that propulsion hitting at least 15% of C will become available in the next few centuries. Personally I take predictions of doom and gloom with a very large grain of salt and once we have permanent settlements offworld we will be very hard to wipe out entirely.