In a sense, this plan needs to be perceived with irony because it is almost irrelevant: we have very small chances of surviving even next 1000 years and if we do, we have a lot of things to do before it becomes reality. And even afterwards, our successors will have completely different plans.
There is one important exception: there are suggestions that collider experiments may lead to a vacuum phase transition, which begins at one point and spreads across the visible universe. Then we can destroy ourselves and our universe in this century, but it would happen so quickly that we will not have time to notice it. (The term "universe" hereafter refers to the observable universe that is the three-dimensional world around us, resulting from the Big Bang.)
We can also solve this problem in next century if we create superintelligence.
The purpose of this plan is to show that actual immortality is possible: that we have an opportunity to live not just billions and trillions of years, but an unlimited duration. My hope is that the plan will encourage us to invest more in life extension and prevention of global catastrophic risks. Our life could be eternal and thus have meaning forever.
Anyway, the end of the observable universe is not an absolute end: it's just one more problem on which the future human race will be able to work. And even at the negligible level of knowledge about the universe that we have today, we are still able to offer more than 50 ideas on how to prevent its end.
In fact, to assemble and come up with these 50 ideas I spent about 200 working hours, and if I had spent more time on it, I'm sure I would have found many new ideas. In the distant future we can find more ideas; choose the best of them; prove them, and prepare for their implementation.
First of all, we need to understand exactly what kind end to the universe we should expect in the natural course of things. There are many hypotheses on this subject, which can be divided into two large groups:
1. The universe is expected to have a relatively quick and abrupt end, known as the Big Crunch or Big Rip (accelerating expansion of the universe causes it to break apart), or the decay of the false vacuum. Vacuum decay can occur at any time; a Big Rip could happen in about 10-30 billion years, and the Big Crunch has hundreds of billions of years timescale.
2. Another scenario assumes an infinitely long existence of an empty, flat and cold universe which would experience so called "heat death" that is gradual halting of all processes and then disappearance of all matter.
The choice between these scenarios depends on the geometry of the universe, which is determined by the equations of general relativity and, – above all – the behavior of the almost unknown parameter: dark energy.
The recent discovery of dark energy has made Big Rip the most likely scenario, but it is clear that the picture of the end of the universe will change several times.
You can find more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe
There are five general approaches to solve the end of the universe problem, each of them includes many subtypes shown in the map:
1. Surf the Wave: Utilize the nature of the process which is ending the universe. (The most known of these type of solutions is Omega Point by Tippler, where the universe's energy collapse is used to make infinite calculations.)
2. Go to parallel world
3. Prevent the end of the universe
4. Survive the end of the universe
5. Dissolving the problem
Some of the ideas are on the level of the wildest possible speculations and I hope you will enjoy them.
The new feature of this map is that in many cases mentioned, ideas are linked to corresponding wiki pages in the pdf.
Download the pdf of the map here: http://immortality-roadmap.com/unideatheng.pdf
This is kinda fun, but it seems to me to fall far short of its stated goal:
(The above is from the footer of the diagram; the post above says "... of this plan ..." instead.) It falls short because what it does is to list dozens of things we might be able to try but for none of them (so far as I can see) do we know that it's actually possible.
In some cases ("Merge with the universe", "Jump to eternal chaotic inflation level", "We live in a simulation and find a way to persuade its hosts not to disable it", ...) you could equally say "Solve the problem using magic". Others at least seem meaningful and might even be possible. But I didn't see anything in the list that there's good reason to think is actually possible, nor even a set of things in the list for which there's good reason to believe that at least one is possible.
By the word "possible" I meant not that immortality is warrant, but that we should not consider the end of the universe as ultimate end until we explore all options to fight with it. There are many directions to explore and we have billions of years to do it (I hope). Some of this direction are listed on the map. Probably hundreds more will be found in the future.
I also think that ideas you mentioned are more sound than just magic. For example "merge with universe" means that all matter in the universe will be converted into computroniu... (read more)