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Could an advanced civilization change the laws of physics?

#1
C C Offline
https://bigthink.com/13-8/advanced-civil...s-physics/

EXCERPT: . . . Kardashev envisioned civilizations that are still subject to the laws of physics. The Universe gives these laws to them just as they are given to us. We cannot change these laws — we can only use them more or less efficiently.

But what if a civilization becomes so advanced that it can in fact change those laws? This civilization would have gone well beyond merely harvesting energy. The very nature of energy itself, with established rules like energy conservation, would be subject to revision within the scope of engineering.

Astrophysicist Caleb Scharf explored this kind of question in a piece entitled, “Is Physical Law an Alien Intelligence?” The work is a masterpiece of creative invention. Scharf explored the rules of physics and asked which ones might have been rewritten by a sufficiently advanced form of life.

One eyebrow-raising possibility concerned dark matter. When astronomers track the motions of galaxies and clusters of galaxies, they find a problem: There is not enough mass to cause the forces needed to drive the observed motions. To solve this problem, astronomers assume there must be a lot of matter that cannot be seen. This means it does not emit light, which means it does not interact with the luminous stuff we see in any way other than through gravity. Hence the claim that the Universe is mostly full of “dark” matter. But for the sake of speculation, Scharf wondered if dark matter’s lack of interactions might not be a consequence of natural law, but rather the engineered result of an advanced civilization’s meddling.

Perhaps, Scharf asked, the best way for life to avoid catastrophes like radiation torrents or blast waves from exploding stars would be to disconnect almost entirely from the Universe. Using a 3-D “normal to dark matter” printer, you could, as Scharf puts it, “upload your world to the huge amount of real estate on the dark side and be done with it.”

Scharf had other ideas, such as a hyper-advanced civilization accelerating the expansion of the Universe — something we now attribute to so-called dark energy. Scharf mused that a sufficiently advanced civilization might actually be the cause of the acceleration. Perhaps they are using it to prevent the eventual heat death of the Universe and to ensure that disorder does not overwhelm the cosmos... (MORE - missing details)
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#2
Yazata Offline
Could an Advanced Civilization Change the Laws of Physics?

That seems to me to depend on whether the laws of physics that contemporary physics seems to think hold true are indeed fundamental in some hard to explain metaphysical sense.

Principles that are fundamental in that sense would be irreducible givens, they would be what explains everything else but can't themselves be explained in terms of anything more basic than they are.

But let's suppose that isn't what the laws of physics are. Let's suppose that there are reasons why the laws of physics exist and are what they seem to be. They are that way as the result of states of affairs more fundamental than they are.

If that's the case, it isn't difficult to imagine some alien or future civilization that knows why it is that the laws of physics seemingly exist and hold true. And it's possible to imagine that they know ways to manipulate or alter those underlying conditions.
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#3
Kornee Offline
(May 21, 2022 05:30 PM)C C Wrote: https://bigthink.com/13-8/advanced-civil...s-physics/

EXCERPT: . . .
Scharf had other ideas, such as a hyper-advanced civilization accelerating the expansion of the Universe — something we now attribute to so-called dark energy. Scharf mused that a sufficiently advanced civilization might actually be the cause of the acceleration. Perhaps they are using it to prevent the eventual heat death of the Universe and to ensure that disorder does not overwhelm the cosmos... (MORE - missing details)
Then a particularly stupid 'advanced civilization'. Since accelerated expansion (not all cosmologists accept it even exists but rather an artifact of one sort or another) implies a more rapid approach to 'heat death' i.e. maximum entropy condition.
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#4
Zinjanthropos Offline
I would have to think the recipe for the laws of physics was present at the BB.  Could they be evolving since then and would there be any proof that it has and is still? What came first ….laws or chaos? 

A civilization that can control or manufacture laws would do so in their own environment/universe and may need to be careful to avoid mixing old with new? What kind of creatures are they if they could survive in any realm where laws can be changed?
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#5
C C Offline
(Jun 16, 2022 04:50 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: I would have to think the recipe for the laws of physics was present at the BB.  Could they be evolving since then and would there be any proof that it has and is still? What came first ….laws or chaos? 

A civilization that can control or manufacture laws would do so in their own environment/universe and may need to be careful to avoid mixing old with new? What kind of creatures are they if they could survive in any realm where laws can be changed?

Arguably akin to the digital inhabitants of a simulation seizing control of the programming -- rewriting it. At first glance, it doesn't seem possible that "game" software could deliberately generate its own viruses or malware at the epiphenomenal level of the virtual beings themselves (one-way causation from the bottom up).
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#6
Magical Realist Offline
Tinkering around with the universe's program might have some catastrophic effects that weren't anticipated. It's like going back in time and changing one little thing. It's the butterfly and the storm chaos principle. An inherent unpredictabilty that emerges along the way towards total indeterminacy.
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#7
Leigha Offline
I’ve read a few theories that suggest space aliens would be from the future, should they exist. Going with that, if they traveled to Earth, how would time travel be possible? (since they’d be traveling to the past?)
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#8
RainbowUnicorn Offline
an advanced civilization that can fold space & maximize the life span of their own people...
would be near god like to humans

tic-tacs . . .
how do they suddenly disappear ?
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#9
Magical Realist Offline
Quote:tic-tacs . . .
how do they suddenly disappear ?

Either they have a cloaking technology that can make them invisible or they can teleport from place to place...imo. Something along the lines of "folding space"?
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#10
C C Offline
(Jun 16, 2022 10:18 PM)Leigha Wrote: I’ve read a few theories that suggest space aliens would be from the future, should they exist. Going with that, if they traveled to Earth, how would time travel be possible? (since they’d be traveling to the past?)

Nothing large for temporal transitions to the past. IF such could ever be the case, they'd use particle-sized sophotrons (sopho- [wise] + tron [device]) created by femtotechnology.

Since sophotrons would be subject to quantum properties/effects, the latter would be self-manipulated to sustain a bias for "flowing" in the opposite direction of time. In contrast to that normally only happening briefly and randomly, or probabilistically: "Time-Reversal Phenomenon: In the Quantum Realm, Not Even Time Flows As You Might Expect"

Once the sophotrons arrive at their designated date in the past (they're programmed to survive and protect themselves throughout the intervening hundreds or thousands of years), they begin self-replicating in earnest. Producing nanobots that eventually constitute and manufacture machines at the scale of our macroscopic level. Some of those would be the UAPs.

In addition, they could also carry DNA information and construct organisms (their designers in the future). But most likely those assembled beings of tomorrow would be synthetic post-humans rather than the original, primitive species that initiated the progressive engineering process on Earth (i.e., us). OTOH, for camouflage purposes, some might outwardly resemble their biological "ancestors", so they could abide among us in secret.
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