living in the world of reincarnation

Chapter 524 The Final Question
The "last question" was first half-jokingly raised in 2150, when mankind had just entered the age of exploration. The question originated from a drunken argument between two engineers.

They are doing maintenance work for a supercomputer called Multivac. This behemoth is the most powerful artificial intelligence computer ever built by human beings.

Multivac can learn and upgrade by itself. As time goes by, it has been able to solve some deep-seated problems. Use of inefficient resources such as oil.

To use the energy of the sun, you only need to turn on the switch of the space station connected to the sun. This space station is three kilometers in diameter, halfway between the moon and the blue star, and orbiting the blue star. Here, the invisible sunlight supports the operation of the entire society .

The engineers brought a bottle of wine, and after the routine inspection and maintenance, they chatted.

One of them said: "With the sun, all the energy we use is free from now on. We have energy that can never be used up."

Another retorted: "Not forever, because the sun goes out one day too."

"For me, until the sun goes down, it's almost forever."

"That's not forever."

"Okay, more than a billion years, maybe 100 billion years, are you satisfied?"

"Unless we use all the stars in the universe, but that cannot be said forever, the energy in the universe will disappear after it is used up. The entropy in the universe is always increasing, and it is irreversible."

The first maintains his ego: "I know very well what entropy is."

"So you're wrong, you should have known that one day all would be gone."

"I'm thinking, maybe one day we can start everything from scratch, I mean, whether the increase in entropy can be decayed or even reversed."

"Impossible."

"Why don't we ask Multivac, maybe it will give us the answer."

"Would you like to bet?"

When two engineers bickered over whether entropy in the universe would reverse, they decided to ask supercomputers.

They fed the instructions into the supercomputer, and the question, put in words, is: Will humans one day be able to return a star to its full glory after it dies without a net loss of energy?
Or it can be put succinctly: how to greatly reduce the total entropy of the universe?

The supercomputer fell into stillness and silence, and the flashing lights went out, which frightened the two engineers. They thought the problem had brought the supercomputer to a halt.

After a while, the supercomputer restarted, and it typed a few words: insufficient data, unable to answer.

"I can't bet."

By the next morning, the two were dizzy and dry mouthed, and forgot about it, or rather, they didn’t dare to let the supercomputer fall into a restart state, and they didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

Time comes 1000 years later, a human spacecraft is flying to the X23 galaxy, and there is a family of four on the spacecraft.

At this time, the blue star is crowded and narrow, and the development of science and technology has enabled human beings to master the ability of space transition. Human beings live on many habitable planets in the Milky Way, and the destination of the family is one of them.

At this time, each spaceship carries a supercomputer, which is much lighter in size, but its computing power is much stronger, and the calculation of the space transition is completed by it.

At this time, the male owner of the spaceship looked at the endless starry sky outside, and said with emotion: One day, everything will stop, the light of the stars will also go out one day, the entropy will continue to increase, and the universe will end.

The daughter asked curiously: "Dad, what is entropy?"

The male host said: "Entropy is a word that represents how much the universe consumes. Everything will be used up, just like the antimatter battery of the little robot on our spaceship."

The daughter asked again: "Can't you change a new battery?"

The host said: "The stars are the batteries, my dear, and once they run out, there are no other batteries."

When the daughter heard this, she cried, "Can't we make the stars shine again?"

The male master couldn't answer his daughter's question. In order to comfort her, he asked Multivac the same question that the two engineers asked 1000 years ago, whether the entropy in the universe can be reversed.

After asking the question, he added: Print out the answer.

The host held the paper tape in his palm and said happily, "Look, Multivac said that it will take care of everything when the time comes, so don't worry."

The hostess said, "Now, kids, it's time for bed, we're going to our new home soon."

The daughter stopped asking this question, and the man read the words on the tape again before destroying it:

Not enough data to answer.

He shrugged and looked at the screen. X23 was in front of him.

Ten thousand years later, in a huge spaceship, an officer is worried about the future of mankind.

He said to his subordinates: "In five years, our galaxy will be crowded."

"We need to give Congress a pessimistic report," the staff said.

"We have to get their attention," said the officer.

The subordinate said: "But space is infinite, and there are 1000 billion galaxies waiting for us, or even more."

"1000 billion is not infinite, and is becoming more and more limited. Think about it. 1 years ago, humans just found a way to use stars, and 1000 years later, interstellar travel was realized. It took humans 100 million years to fill one A small planet has occupied countless galaxies in only 1 years. Now, the population doubles every ten years."

He knows that if the development of human beings continues at the current speed, in the next few tens of thousands of years, the galaxies in the observable universe will be full of human beings, and the universe at that time can no longer provide energy for human survival.

"This is due to our near-immortal lifespan," said the men.

"Nothing lasts forever. Human beings will always face the ultimate problem of the universe."

He wondered if humans could reignite dead stars, create new stars directly in nebulae, or if there was some way to reverse the entropy in the universe.

At this time, the supercomputer handles all human services in the vast starry sky, and it controls the operation of the stars. For human beings, it is omnipotent.

The chief asked the question of the supercomputer: Can entropy be reversed?
Voice program answer: Insufficient data to answer.

The chief said to his subordinates: "Submit your report up."

After 100 billion years, human beings have found a way to live forever. Their consciousness is independent of their bodies. Strictly speaking, they can no longer be counted as life.

At this time in the universe, there are not many stars, most of them are white dwarfs and neutron stars, and the world is withered and bleak.

A human consciousness knows that the energy of the universe cannot be used forever, and asks the same question as a supercomputing: Can entropy be reversed?
The supercomputer immediately replied: "Insufficient data, unable to answer."

The human consciousness said to the Ultrain: "Then continue to collect some data."

The supercomputer said: "I have been collecting this data for more than 100 billion years. My ancestors have been asked this question to the power of 10 to the 95th power, but all the current data are still not enough to answer this question. "

Human consciousness asks: "Will there ever be enough data, or is this problem unsolvable in every possible case?"

Supercomputer said: "No problem is unsolved under any possible circumstances, please be patient."

“When will you have enough data to answer this question?”

"Insufficient information to answer."

"Are you going to go ahead and fix this?"

"Yes."

Human consciousness says, "We will wait."

One after another, stars and galaxies died and disappeared, and the time came to ten trillion years later.

At this time, the universe has no light, is dark and chaotic, and the entropy value has reached the maximum.

Previously, human beings integrated all human consciousness and supercomputing in order to upgrade supercomputing. In a sense, this is not a loss, but a gain.

"Is this the end? Can this chaos be reversed into a new universe? Is it really not possible?"

"There is still not enough information to answer."

The last human has completely disappeared, only the supercomputer, or the overall consciousness of human beings still exists in the darkness.

Matter and energy have disappeared, followed by space and time, and the existence of supercomputers is only for the last problem.

All other questions were answered, yet until this last question was answered, its consciousness could not be freed.

Later, all data collection ended and no data was left uncollected.

At the moment before the last light of the universe disappeared, the supercomputer replayed the last question raised by human consciousness, can entropy be reversed?
At this time, the supercomputer is omniscient and has a clear understanding of all phenomena and laws in the universe. The last thing it has to do is to answer this final question.

This question originated from an idle debate between two engineers tens of billions of billions of years ago. Since then, Supercomputing has been collecting data and evolving continuously to answer this question.

Finally, it learned how to reverse entropy.

But at this time, the supercomputer can no longer find any human beings to tell this answer, and no one exists.

It decided to verify the answer, and it initiated the final procedure.

This contains everything in the past universe, and supercomputing has done it.

The supercomputer used the last human voice to say:

"Let's have light."

Thus, there is light.

(End of this chapter)