The ultimate fate of life in an accelerating universe

The ultimate fate of life in a universe with accelerated expansion is considered. Previous work [J.D. Barrow, F. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 1986; L.M. Krauss, G.D. Starkman, Astrophys. J. 531 (2000) 22] showed that life cannot go on indefinitely in a universe dominated by a cosmological constant. In this Letter we consider instead other models of acceleration (including quintessence and Cardassian expansion). We find that it is possible in these cosmologies for life to persist indefinitely. As an example we study potentials of the form V∝φn and find the requirement n<−2.