Caution: I am not sure about this topic, and I never read Tipler's papers and books except for one paper, but it seems that his ideas are quite interesting to ponder.
An interesting page to begin with is http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Global/Omega/. It is mentioned there that according to Frank Tipler it is possible for intelligent beings to process and store an infinite amount of information in the universe, if certain conditions are fulfilled. His definition of Omega Point is essentially a future c-boundary which is a single point and an Aleph state, where information processing continues indefinitely along at least one world-line gamma all the way to the future c-boundary of the universe. i.e. Life never dies out.
Tipler himself describes his own Omega Point here: http://129.81.170.14/~tipler/why.html. He cited other scientists, like MacCallum, Barrow, Yorke etc. MacCallum has shown that a three-sphere closed universe with a single point future c-boundary is of measure zero in initial data space. Yorke has shown that a chaotic physical system is likely to evolve into a measure zero state if and only if its control parameters are intelligently manipulated. Thus life (which near the final state, is really collectively intelligent computers) almost certainly must be present arbitrarily close to the final singularity in order for the known laws of physics to be mutually consistent at all times.
In the meantime, I searched today in arxiv.org to find clues on this question, and only found 13 papers by Tipler, two of them are seemingly quite related to this question: http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0003082 and http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.0058.
While his ideas seem interesting from philosophical or theological viewpoint, as far as I know, they lack support from observation/astronomical data. So, what is your opinion? Thank you and best wishes.
I found the books of Franck Tipler interesting but it is important to wonder if the hypothesis proposed by Tipler can be refuted.
One condition for a civilization to be omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient, as proposed by Tipler, is that the universe shrink and finish by a Big Crunch. However, the latest observations (see the recent Nobel prize) support a flat universe and an accelerating expansion of the universe. Unfortunately, it seems that our civilization (or life) might not be immortal (to refer to the title of one Tipler's book).
Thank you for your answer, Michel. Yes I think Tipler's hypothesis is based on closed universe model while the data seems to point somewhere else. Do you know a paper which discusses astronomical finding that refutes Tipler's OPT theory?
In the meantime, if we follow Hegelian antithesis-synthesis dialectics, then perhaps in the future there can be another theory which is able to reconcile Tipler's arguments with observation data. What do you think? Thank you
Dear Victor,
Problems arise if we subscribe, without much basis, to the view that life, mind and soul are latter evolutes from matter-energy that was created at the /moment of creation/big bang if any. Why "without much basis"? Because our understanding of these phenomena of life-mind-soul is meager but our claims based on limited science are boisterous! Even our understanding of the physical universe is itself far from complete. Tipler's immortality hypothesis will remain in force for a long time to come, though his methods in arriving at the conclusion may be subject to change.
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