On the 11th of April I conducted a discussion among myself and around five

other friends of mine over the online VoIP service Discord. We spoke for around 70

minutes on various subjects, most of which centered around hypothetical astronomy

regarding the late, post-stelliferous period of the universe.

Background information was largely gathered through our interests in YouTube

channels such as PBS SpaceTime and Isaac Arthur, both of which cover topics of

astronomy and astrophysics, Isaac Arthur particularly focusing on it through the lens of

the discussion of hypothetical concepts such as extraterrestrial life and advanced

interstellar societies and how they would function. My friends and I all share a similar

interest in space and the concepts of hypothetical astronomical scenarios, particularly

through (realistic) sci-fi settings, and we regularly discuss such things in our free time

over voice chats, building what has amounted to a rather intensive and in-depth setting

for our ideas.

The first subject we discussed was the concept of a late-universe society, be it

made by whatever is the future of mankind, or some kind of other extraterrestrial

civilization altogether. All of us were in consensus that they were possible, but we

shared different insight as to how they might draw power from a universe with dwindling

resources and energy to do so, and with such great expanses of space between objects

in the expanding universe that travel would essentially be made useless by the

accelerating force of dark energy.

I expressed the idea that societies would largely rely upon black holes once they

had become the dominant form of stellar remnant within the universe, with societies
being built in orbit of these behemoths, using megastructures known as Matrioshka

Brains which could as such run a matrix-esque simulation containing countless billions

or even trillions of individual uploaded minds in such a way that they would be able to

function within their own reality, the Matrioshka Brain being powered by harnessing the

energy of the black hole in any multitude of ways, such as tapping into the energy of its

immense rotational potential, gravitic potential from mass spiraling in its accretion disc,

or even directly tapping into the black hole through Hawking radiation.

My friends spoke more on what could be the last bastions of society within the

dying embers of the universe, such as the iron star, something we are not sure can truly

exist within our universe yet. The iron star is a stellar remnant, and its existence is

entirely dependent on the stability of the proton. At the moment, we are not entirely sure

whether or not the proton is a stable formation, or one which is unstable, although with a

half-life so immense that within the scale of the stelliferous, and even the black hole

eras of the universe, it might as well be stable.

However, if it is unstable and will eventually break down to its composite quarks

and gluons, the iron star will be impossible, and eventually all matter in our universe will

either be consumed by black holes that evaporate away from Hawking radiation, or

degrade until the only things in the universe are a sea of virtual particles and photons. If

the proton is a stable structure, however, eventually dead stellar cores such as black

dwarves, will eventually become massive balls of Iron-56 Nuclei through the processes

of quantum tunneling of light nuclei, and alpha-decay of heavy nuclei. These actions will

produce massive amounts of energy as they occur, even though they will be extremely
far between (on the order of 10^1500 years for an entire core to convert to iron),

allowing a Matrioshka Brain running on pitifully small amounts of energy to sustain

themselves for countless millennia.

Altogether, I found our discussion to be one that was rather fruitful and

stimulating. Astronomy is a subject that I heartily enjoy. I’ll often find myself spending

much of my free time working on projects related to sci-fi settings, or by watching videos

by channels which focus on astronomy and astrophysics, and as such it is fun to have

someone I can talk to about such things.