Hi SDF

Thanks for your thoughts. However I tend to disagree on how the Sun and stars will be managed in the aeons ahead. The current crop of high mass stars might escape the stellar engineers, but eventually they will all be converted into low mass long lived stars. Stars like the sun, and heavier, are grossly inefficient at fusion energy production - only 8% of the Sun's mass will be fused before the end of the Main Sequence. Low-mass Red dwarf stars manage to burn almost 99% of their hydrogen.

What then? After ten trillion years the lowest mass stars will peter out. To keep going the stars will need a higher efficiency energy process to utilise the rest of their mass energy - q-balls to catalyse proton decay or mini-black holes. The Sun, if engineered to avoid mass loss, would last 14 trillion years at its current output. The smallest stars would last about a quadrillion.

If the Universe is compact and we can engineer its recollapse then the collapse can be engineered to produce infinite amounts of gravitational energy - but the Universe will get hotter and hotter, beyond even neutron star core conditions. When quarks are deconfined Life will have to be based on something hardier than mere matter.

Adam