Frank Tipler on Matter-Energy Conversion

  • Thread starter WarrenPlatts
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In summary, the physicist suggests that it may be possible to convert all the mass of ordinary matter into energy, and if this is true, it would solve all our energy problems. This is terrifying news, and if it's true, English-speaking civilizations had better figure it out first.
  • #1
WarrenPlatts
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I'm not sure which forum to place this (feel free to move it), but the implications for the Drake equation factor measuring civilization life-spans and interstellar space travel are obvious, and Tipler himself is a cosmologist:

"Why I Hope the Standard Model is Wrong about Why There is More Matter Than Antimatter

The Standard Model of particle physics — a theory of all forces and particles except gravity and a theory that has survived all tests over the past thirty years — says it is possible to convert matter entirely into energy. Old-fashioned nuclear physics allows some matter to be converted into energy, but because nuclear physics requires the number of heavy particles like neutrons and protons, and light particles like electrons, to be separately conserved in nuclear reactions, only a small fraction (less than 1%) of the mass of the uranium or plutonium in an atomic bomb can be converted into energy. The Standard Model says that there is a way to convert all the mass of ordinary matter into energy; for example, it is in principle possible to convert the proton and electron making up a hydrogen atom entirely into energy. Particle physicists have long known about this possibility, but have considered it forever irrelevant to human technology because the energy required to convert matter into pure energy via this process is at the very limit of our most powerful accelerators (a trillion electron volts, or one TeV).

I am very much afraid that the particle physicists are wrong about this Standard Model pure energy conversion process being forever irrelevant to human affairs. I have recently come to believe that the consistency of quantum field theory requires that it should be possible to convert up to 100 kilograms of ordinary matter into pure energy via this process using a device that could fit inside the trunk of a car, a device that could be manufactured in a small factory. Such a device would solve all our energy problems — we would not need fossil fuels — but 100 kilograms of energy is the energy released by a 1,000-megaton nuclear bomb. If such a bomb can be manufactured in a small factory, then terrorists everywhere will eventually have such weapons. I fear for the human race if this comes to pass. I very hope I am wrong about the technological feasibility of such a bomb."

http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_4.html#tipler

Has anyone here heard of this possibility? Pretty scary, if true. If it is as easy as Tipler suggests we (English-speaking civilization) had better figure it out first.
 
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  • #2
WarrenPlatts said:
Has anyone here heard of this possibility? Pretty scary, if true. If it is as easy as Tipler suggests we (English-speaking civilization) had better figure it out first.
Why would it be better in "English-speaking civilizations" hands? That seems like a very general statement.
 
  • #3
matt.o said:
Why would it be better in "English-speaking civilizations" hands? That seems like a very general statement.
Not to say chauvinistic!

I'm not very convinced by claims of "a device that could fit inside the trunk of a car, a device that could be manufactured in a small factory. Such a device would solve all our energy problems", am I being over sceptical? On the other hand if this is indeed possible then perhaps this will be Our Final Century.

Have a belated Happy New Year!

Garth
 
  • #4
matt.o said:
Why would it be better in "English-speaking civilizations" hands? That seems like a very general statement.

Traitors! You'd rather have the Chicoms, or the Russians, or the Iranians or North Koreans--or dare I even say the French--develop it first?!? As if history would be the same if the Nazis or Soviets developed the first fission bombs! Why do you think Einstein emigrated to the U.S. of A. instead of, say, Japan? I'm sure they would have appreciated his talents even though he was Jewish.

Besides, think of the licensing fees that will accrue to the first who can find a peaceful application of such a technology.

And it would make manned interstellar space travel a realistic possibility.
 
  • #5
Garth's Link said:
In July 1999 Scientific American ran a letter by Princeton University physicist Frank Wilczek, who pointed to "a speculative but quite respectable possibility" that the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) could produce particles called strangelets. These subatomic oddities could grow by consuming nearby ordinary matter. Soon after, a British newspaper posited that a "big bang machine"--that is, RHIC--could destroy the planet.

The ensuing media flurry led then Brookhaven director John H. Marburger to pull together an outside panel of physicists, who concluded that the strangelet scenario was remote, about a one-in-50-million chance of killing six billion people.

Jesus, help us . . . .
 
  • #6
I think it’s good to discuss issues dealing with pandemics, environmental problems and nuclear weapons, as it increases awareness. But when people start saying the worlds going to end and predicting doomsday scenarios, and even with regards to a civilizations life expectancy in the drake equation, I find it a little unrealistic and over the top. I don’t mean asteroids, I mean extinction or massive destruction brought about by man. I like to give humans a little more credit, seeing as we are not totally at the mercy of nature.
 
  • #7
Vast said:
I like to give humans a little more credit, seeing as we are not totally at the mercy of nature.
No, we are at the mercy of our own human nature, now what did Warren say?...

Garth
 
  • #8
WarrenPlatts said:
Traitors! You'd rather have the Chicoms, or the Russians, or the Iranians or North Koreans--or dare I even say the French--develop it first?!? As if history would be the same if the Nazis or Soviets developed the first fission bombs! Why do you think Einstein emigrated to the U.S. of A. instead of, say, Japan? I'm sure they would have appreciated his talents even though he was Jewish.
Besides, think of the licensing fees that will accrue to the first who can find a peaceful application of such a technology.
And it would make manned interstellar space travel a realistic possibility.

Yeah, and the good ol' US of A used bombs so wisely. Hiroshima anyone?
 
  • #9
OK Matt, you've got a point regarding Hiroshima. I've got into fist fights with my own father over Hiroshima (granted I was born in Japan). The allies (which includes Australia) could have dropped one down the throat of Mount Fuji for everyone including the Emperor to see, or just blockaded the whole country indefinitely like we tried in Iraq for 12 years, but they wanted to see what the bomb would do to a real city. That's why they reserved about 7 Japanese cities from conventional bombing--so they could tell the difference. It wouldn't've done any good to nuke Tokyo because it was already so bombed out, they wouldn't be able to tell what damage was caused by the nuke vs. all the previous firebombing. So Hiroshima was as much a scientific experiment as anything else.

That said, it's still a good thing that "we" developed it first. The Imperial Japanese had their own atomic program, and they would have been even more ruthless in its deployment than we were, and we'd be talking about "San Francisco" and "Sydney", instead of "Hiroshima" and "Nagasaki".

But really my main point was not politics or history, it's physics. I was hoping that some of the physicist types here could help me sleep easier. Someone like Spacetiger--he knows everything--or Astronuc with a small handfull of links, who could answer some basic questions. Like:

1. Tipler is pretty famous, but he's known for his unorthodox ideas. Is he to be taken seriously?

2. Does anyone have a clue about how Tipler thinks it possible to manufacture large amounts of antimatter?

3. Should we even discuss this on the internet, considering that our enemies could be reading this as well?

4. If Tipler just now stumbled upon this dangerous idea, does this mean that the DoD probably already possesses antimatter bombs?

5. How much antimatter would it take to accelerate a 1,000 ton ship to .9 c?
 
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  • #10
Garth said:
No, we are at the mercy of our own human nature, now what did Warren say?...
Garth

I would like to think instincts are subdued by reason, and would like to think the world isn’t run by lunatics and fanatics. You may argue that we are at the mercy of our own human nature, and I would grant you that a lot of people are, but I would also argue that a lot of people aren’t, and are capable of going one step further to control their behavior in a rational way.
 
  • #11
Lunatics and fanatics don't run the world--only individual countries like Iran and North Korea, or even worse underground organizations like Al Quaeda. It only takes a few bad apples equipped with a few antimatter bombs to spoil the whole barrel.
 
  • #12
It may be that the only reason Tipler thinks there should be an easy way of converting matter to energy is because he sees such a possibility as essential to stopping the acceleration of the universe and getting the universe to contract again so that his "Omega Point" theory can be true. Have a look at this seriously nutty essay by Tipler:

http://home.worldonline.nl/~sttdc/tipler.htm

In it, he writes:
The reason I never considered the possibility the universe could accelerate in its expanding phase is that if the acceleration were to continue forever, life would be wiped out, and the Omega Point would never come into existence. As I showed above, this would contradict unitarity by black hole evaporation. If the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics is true, then there can be only one cause of acceleration of the universe, namely a positive cosmological constant. As I point out in my book [1], the SM says the universe is in a vacuum of the Higgs field, and it says that this vacuum would act today as a very large negative cosmological constant. If this vacuum were uncancelled by a positive cosmological constant today, the universe would collapse into a final singularity in a fraction of a second. Hence a positive cosmological constant must exist to cancel the Higgs vacuum energy. I thus assumed in my book [1] that the Higgs field is in its absolute vacuum state today, where we would expect the positive cosmological constant to precisely cancel the Higgs vacuum energy.

But suppose the Higgs field is not in its absolute vacuum state. In such a case, the Higgs vacuum energy would only partially cancel the positive cosmological constant. The uncancelled part of the positive cosmological constant would cause the universe to accelerate when the matter density dropped low enough. But if the Higgs field is not in its absolute vacuum, there must be a mechanism to cause this, and also to allow the Higgs vacuum to relax to its absolute vacuum so that unitarity will not be violated.

The SM provides such a mechanism, which I actually discussed in the last section of the Appendix for Scientists in ([1], p. 515). This mechanism is the creation/destruction of baryon number by electroweak quantum tunneling. (Baryons are the heavy particles made up of quarks. Examples are neutrons and protons.) In my book, I pointed out that this mechanism would be ideal for propelling interstellar spacecraft , but I did not discuss its implications for the Higgs vacuum, a serious oversight on my part. (An oversight which invalidates the second part of my Fifth Prediction on page 149 of [1].) If the SM is true - ALL experiments conducted to date indicate that it is (e.g. [17] and [72], last full paragraph on p. 35) - then the net baryon number observed in the universe must have been created in the early universe by this mechanism of electroweak quantum tunneling. If the baryons were so created, then this process necessarily forces the Higgs field to be in a vacuum state that is not its absolute vacuum. But if the baryons in the universe were to be annihilated by this process, say by the action of intelligent life, then this would force the Higgs field toward its absolute vacuum, canceling the positive cosmological constant, stopping the acceleration, and allowing the universe to collapse into the Omega Point. Conversely, if enough baryons are not annihilated by this process, the positive cosmological constant will never be cancelled, the universe will expand forever, unitarity will be violated, and the Omega Point will never come into existence. Only if life makes use of this process to annihilate baryons will the Omega Point come into existence.

...

The observed acceleration of the universe provides a possible reason why the Virgin Birth and Resurrection necessarily had to occur if the universe is to evolve into the Omega Point. If the acceleration is to eventually stop, and be converted into a de-acceleration and universal collapse, then our descendants must eventually expand out into the universe and annihilate baryons via the electroweak tunneling process. We do not know how to do this. We only know that this process is allowed according to the Standard Model, and must have operated in the early universe. On the basis of the SM alone, we have no indication of how to annihilate baryons in a practical way. But if the universe is to evolve into the Omega Point, then there necessarily must be a practical, small scale method of annihilating baryons to provide energy (before the re-collapse of the universe provides gravitational energy [1]) and to provide efficient relativistic rockets.
So if you start with the assumption that intelligent beings will force the universe to collapse, maybe it is true that the only way for this to be possible is if there's a small-scale way of converting baryons to energy, but if you don't take that assumption for granted there may be no other reason for thinking this is likely. By the way, Tipler goes on to suggest that this process is responsible for the dematerialization of Jesus' body, and that the reason for his body's disappearance and reappearance is to satisfy the "Omega Point boundary condition" by helping us to discover this small-scale process by studying the Shroud of Turin! At the end of the essay he also suggests the boundary condition as an explanation for why radiocarbon dating seemed to show the shroud was a medieval forgery (to prevent scientists from doing research on it and finding this small-scale process too early), and suggests that he himself (along with a german theologian who inspired him) plays a crucial role in this cosmic drama:
There is a good reason for thinking that we can in fact learn these three things from a study of the Shroud. I emphasized above that the universe is currently accelerating. If this acceleration were to continue forever, the laws of physics would be violated, as I also showed above. Therefore the acceleration must stop. Therefore there must exist a mechanism to stop the acceleration. If the Standard Model of particle physics is correct, then the acceleration can come from only one source: an imbalance between the electroweak vacuum and the positive cosmological constant. For a discussion of why a positive cosmological constant is required by the Standard Model, see my book [1]. But if there is a net number of particles over antiparticle - as all observations indicate - and if the excess of particles were created by electroweak baryogenesis - as must be the case if the Standard Model is correct - then the electroweak vacuum cannot be in its absolute minimum. Thus the positive cosmological constant is not presently canceled out, and so the universe accelerates. But if the particles were to be annihilated with sufficient rapidity by the inverse of the electroweak process that created them, then the acceleration would stop, and eventually the universe would eventually collapse into the Omega Point, preserving the laws of physics. To put it another way, the laws of physics REQUIRE this to happen.

But as I explained above, the particles will not be annihilated with the necessary rapidity by the random use of electroweak baryo-antigenesis. Only a guided use of this sphaleron process will annihilate matter fast enough. Only if our descendants expand out into the universe and make extensive use of this process will the particles be annihilated fast enough. But if our descendants understand how to use the sphaleron process on a small scale they will do this automatically. They have to act in this way in order to survive, and they have to know about the process in order for the laws of physics to hold for all time. It is possible that our descendants will learn how to make practical use of electroweak baryo-antigenesis through their own efforts.

Or it may be that we will need some hints of how to develop this process. In which case the hints are on the Shroud. But the power that comes with the knowledge of the electroweak baryo-antigenesis process is gigantic. Remember that the power involves the ability to convert 78 kilograms of matter into energy almost instantaneously. If the energy were to appear as photons, this would be the equivalent to the explosion of a one thousand megaton bomb. It would not do for us to have the process before we develop a social system that can handle this power. (A similar argument is now being used by the United States government to justify the invasion of Iraq.) It would also have been dangerous to have a man (or a woman) infected by Original Sin to have this power 2,000 years ago. So we will get the power only when we have learned to use it.

This could be an explanation for the error made in 1988 on the radiodating of the Shroud. What originally convinced me that the Shroud was a fake was the fact that the date obtained was precisely that expected if the Shroud were a medieval forgery. The Shroud first appeared in France in 1355, and the Arizona laboratory obtained a radiocarbon date of 1350. It seems incredible that later contamination came in exactly the right amount to give an exactly incorrect date. Unless the contamination was adjusted (by the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, acting through the laws of physics), to prevent us from starting extensive research on the Shroud too early, and obtaining the sphaleron process too early. Unless, that is, the contamination were a miracle.

Even many Christians often assume that miracles occurred only in the distant past. But if Christianity is true, then we would expect miracles to happen all the time, even today. On January 6, 1945, a young German boy had an experience closely resembling Paul's experience on the road to Damascus ([31], p. 12). It was the most moving experience of his life, and was one reason why be later became a Christian theologian. Further, he became one of the very few modern theologians to emphasize that Christian belief must be completely rational. Miracles for this theologian must be completely consistent with the laws of physics. Was the religious experience of this 16-year-old German boy merely a temporary random glitch in his brain, or could it have been another miracle? This particular German boy in his later capacity as a theologian was largely responsible for re-introducing rationality into Christian theology. He certainly spent 15 years in a finally successful attempt to persuade an American physicist that Christianity undiluted Chalcedonian Christianity, might in fact be true, and might even be proven to be true by science.
 
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  • #13
JesseM said:
At the end of the essay he also suggests the boundary condition as an explanation for why radiocarbon dating seemed to show the shroud was a medieval forgery (to prevent scientists from doing research on it and finding this small-scale process too early), and suggests that he himself (along with a german theologian who inspired him) plays a crucial role in this cosmic drama:

Haha, such a wild imagination. I’m surprised he’s even a part of Edge. The way he tries to unite science and religion, is like trying to put a round block into a square hole, the result is disaster and a distortion of science, and a desperate attempt to make superstitious beliefs still relevant and credible in a scientific age.
 
  • #14
Collecting anti-matter appears to be slightly less difficult than constructing an Abercrombie drive . . . . re: the Athena project. It doesn't look like a credible threat to humanity.
 
  • #15
Vast said:
Haha, such a wild imagination. I’m surprised he’s even a part of Edge. The way he tries to unite science and religion, is like trying to put a round block into a square hole, the result is disaster and a distortion of science,
And theology
and a desperate attempt to make superstitious beliefs still relevant and credible in a scientific age.
Or, a desperate attempt to make science still relevant in a superstitious age?

From the website First Things
In the book, The Laughing Prophet by Emile Cammaerts, published the year after Chesterton’s death in 1937, he discusses “The Oracle of the Dog” and, quoting Father Brown, writes:

“Its drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it’s coming in like a sea; and the name of it is superstition.” The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything. [p. 211]


Garth
 
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  • #16
Wow! Thanks Jesse. I can sleep easier now knowing that we won't have to worry about antimatter bombs in the near future. Unfortunately, that means there won't be any antimatter rockets any time soon either. Oh well.

Electroweak tunneling . . . . . .
 
  • #17
Garth said:
The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything

So how would that relate to Tipler and his omega point theory? If he’s is also God, yet anything seems to go?
 
  • #18
Vast - The remark is often quoted attributed to the writer and theologian G.K.Chesterton; actually the article on the website I linked to was describing how the quote was actually a concatenation of two of his remarks by Emile Cammaerts.

The point that both (and I) were making was that in this so called scientific age a tide of superstition is actually making it acceptable to believe in almost anything. It is the traditional methods of a well thought out body of knowledge, including scientific knowledge, which is often rejected. For example, I despair that, in Britian at least, a course on astrology is far more popluar than one on astronomy, that any 'snake oil' can be sold to the masses whereas scientifically based and tested medicine is considered with suspicion, and a obscurantist six-day-creation fundamentalism is eroding the credability of the Christian faith.

As I understand his life and work Tipler was brought up in the Bible Belt of the USA in such a fundamentalist tradition, that he wisely rejected that way of thinking as he grew up and went into astronomy, but that subsequently he developed a 'cosmological' version of the fundamentalist eschatology he had been brought up with, which was a highly speculative version of 'the end times' as published in the otherwise praiseworthy book "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle" as the 'Omega Point'. (If any knows otherwise please correct me)

In my opinion not only is such speculation bad science but it is bad theology as well; it would be good not to accept it without considered scepticism.

As for Tipler being God, I will leave for you to decide.

Garth
 
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  • #19
Garth said:
The point that both (and I) were making was that in this so called scientific age a tide of superstition is actually making it acceptable to believe in almost anything. It is the traditional methods of a well thought out body of knowledge, including scientific knowledge, which is often rejected. For example, I despair that, in Britian at least, a course on astrology is far more popluar than one on astronomy, that any 'snake oil' can be sold to the masses whereas scientifically based and tested medicine is considered with suspicion, and a obscurantist six-day-creation fundamentalism is eroding the credability of the Christian faith.

You may have a different perspective on this than me, but I would say the opposite were true, that humans have been steeped in superstition for thousands of years. The tide of which you speak, might actually have some significance, due to the ever increasing diversity of different cultures living together in certain parts of the world, which along with it brings many different superstitious beliefs, which were once only suited for that particular culture, but has now become a varied assortment of those popular beliefs.

Superstition is still very much prevalent and not likely to go away any time soon, despite the growing skepticism and critical thinking that comes along with applying the scientific method. But it is due to this scientific method that I would acknowledge as having existed for only a few short centuries, to have been the force that has stemmed the tide of superstitious beliefs.

Garth said:
As for Tipler being God, I will leave for you to decide.

I think you may have misunderstood me. I was merely pointing out an inconsistency with the quote, which I found amusing when applied to Tipler’s wild imagination. What I meant to say was: “If his omega point is God, and also anything goes” (intelligent life having the capability to perform anything imaginable) the quote seems to lose all meaning.
 
  • #20
Ahh I see! I was wondering...

Garth
 
  • #21
WarrenPlatts said:
I can sleep easier now knowing that we won't have to worry about antimatter bombs in the near future. Unfortunately, that means there won't be any antimatter rockets any time soon either.

Sorry to disturb your sleep, but it might not be that far into the future than you imagine, considering military spending in the US.

Today the price for 100 billionths of a gram of antimatter is around $6 billion. 1 millionths of a gram is equivalent to 37.8 kilograms of TNT. Only problem is mass production and storage, though this should be sorted out with time.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/10/04/MNGM393GPK1.DTL" [Broken]
 
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  • #22
One could store an anti proton innside a buckyball--the negatively charged electron cloud will repel the antiproton. MW of c60 is 720 amu's. Would have to attach a postively charged tail to outside of buckyball molecule. Thus, less than a pound of C60 could contain 1/2 gm of antimatter at room temperature. Wrap the buckyball mixture with C4 plastic explosive, and voila, an antimatter bomb the size of a grapefruit with the power of a Hiroshima-style fission bomb.
 

1. What is Frank Tipler's theory on matter-energy conversion?

Frank Tipler's theory, known as the Omega Point Theory, proposes that advanced civilizations will eventually develop the technology to convert all matter in the universe into energy, leading to the creation of a super-intelligent, omnipotent being known as the Omega Point.

2. How does Tipler's theory explain the origin of the universe?

Tipler suggests that the Omega Point, with its vast intelligence and energy, could have created the universe as a means of ensuring its own existence. This idea is based on the concept of a closed timelike curve, where the future can influence the past, allowing for the creation of the universe by the Omega Point.

3. Is there evidence to support Tipler's theory?

At this time, there is no concrete evidence to support Tipler's theory. It is largely considered a speculative and controversial idea within the scientific community. However, Tipler argues that the theory is based on known physical laws and mathematical principles.

4. Are there any criticisms of Tipler's theory?

Many scientists have criticized Tipler's theory, citing the lack of evidence and the reliance on unproven concepts such as closed timelike curves and the existence of the Omega Point. Additionally, some argue that the theory goes against the laws of thermodynamics and the principle of cause and effect.

5. How does Tipler's theory relate to the concept of the singularity?

The concept of the singularity, or the point at which technology and intelligence become infinitely advanced, is a key component of Tipler's theory. Tipler suggests that the Omega Point represents the ultimate singularity, where all matter and energy is converted and unified into a single entity with unlimited power and knowledge.

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