Benford, Gregory

Greg is a physicist, NASA consultant, and science-fiction novelist. A Professor of physics, University of California at Irvine, specializing in plasma physics and astrophysics, he has written over 30 science fiction books, including Timescape, If the Stars are Gods, COSM, and Heart of the Comet (with David Brin), and he is considered perhaps the most scientifically accurate science fiction writer. He has proposed large-scale global engineering projects such as a massive space lens to diffuse the light of the sun and ameliorate global warming. Here’s an expression of how Greg unifies his science and science fiction: “Our universe is about 15 billion years old, or a little over 1010 years. In principle, everybody agrees that despite the steady cooling, order could persist even up to 1034 years. Here we speak of unimaginably long times—except that science fiction writers, and now physicists, have imagined them, guided by the gliding calculus of theoretical physics. But writing down numbers is a dry way of gaining what we really mean by imagining, i.e., having a gut feeling. Still, calculation is all we have to go on. After protons fade away, say 1034 years, our Local Group of galaxies will be just a swarm of dark matter, electrons and positrons. Thoughts and memories could survive beyond the first 1036 years, if downloaded into complicated circuits and magnetic fields in clouds of electrons and positrons -- maybe something that would resemble the threatening alien intelligence in The Black Cloud, the first and most imaginative of astronomer Fred Hoyle's novels, written in the 1950s. ‘An austere mode of existence,’ Freeman Dyson felt. And with classic understatement, ‘…even if this assumption is wrong, it is certainly good for the next 1034 years, long enough for life to study the situation carefully.’ The second bit of bad news is that the accelerating expansion means the universe cools even faster. There is less time to avert the cold, and less room, too….Finally, what can one infer from physics about theology? It is tempting to suppose that a God who made such a universe might, as narrative-addicted humans do, think that the end of a story tells its meaning. If all order is to be leached away by eternal cold, what did the building of such structure by intelligence amount to? Put differently, what is the meaning of human action? Perhaps nothing, if the fate of all order is mere ruin. If it is not, and Dyson proves right, we might turn to another Dyson idea: that the universe has been designed to be the most interesting possible. This means that variations arise and abound, then evolve and finally aspire to greater heights. So in the end our choice of endings implies a choice of the Designer behind it all. One wonders if, once the theoretical physics is settled, the outcome will provoke fresh theological thinking. If intelligence can persist forever in principle, will this result be used in a new form of the Argument from Design? Conversely, if life cannot survive, will atheists make this into an argument for no God, or for a God with a perverse (to us) purpose? Either way, the debate will be made more interesting by the injection of a new set of physical facts. Science fiction’s role is to explore the human implications. Hot topics like the possibility of other dimensions in which different universes dwell (‘branes’ for membranes; not a great scientific shorthand) will be experimentally checkable within perhaps five to ten years. Such exotic notions will provoke much fiction—already has, in my Beyond Infinity. The accelerating expansion might itself accelerate, leading to the “big rip” which shreds atoms, erasing all information—truly a horrifying prospect, if you think Shakespeare’s works should live forever. Surely this is a grand, Wagnerian struggle worthy of life in the far future. So I end by quoting James Gunn: ‘Fiction, I think, is humanity's way of seeking justice in an uncaring universe.’”