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)
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)