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and what comes after that guys
Good to know that. I am sometimes just thinking that we lived in a bright second. And are now staring into darkness.
This is the main reason why, if you come across a genie in a lamp, you should probably not wish for immortality. You’re gonna be hellafuckin bored for a loooooooong time.
Why? Are you bored now? If so, why is it a problem? If not, then what’s the problem?
I don’t want to imagine the level of procrastination I would have if I were immortal.
Just one trillion years will do
I would wish for a life that ends when I want it to. Like the numenoreans had in LoTR
From what I have read on the internet so far, it’s probably best to not wish for anything at all. Just throw it in the deepest ocean to do us all a favour.
I suppose you could wish for all genies to be instantly annihilated. Maybe toss the GOP in there for good measure.
“Your wish shall be granted.”
genie destroys the universe
“Eh, worth it.”
What about extreme longevity though
Wont there also be balls of iron-56 just chilling?
Oh shit that’s true
Yet all this energy and electromagnetic phenomena
from our very limited vantage point and experiments
feels like it bathes everything as it decays gradually
in slow motion, one rung at a time, towards entropy,
zooming down an exponential thermodynamic curve
that aims and trends towards zero, beyond our view,
beyond the horizon, touching infinity itself.
And here’s the craziest part: the space itself where
this is all taking place, is accelerating its’ expansion.Like living in a slow motion explosion on a spec of dust
Want to live forever? Tough. Cos even if you could stop your body from growing old and dying, the planet is going to get too warm and nothing will be able to live on it. Then the sun will expand and destroy the planet. But even if you could leave the planet, theres no where close by to get too that wont have the same problems later on. But even if you could get to another solar system, same thing happens again. But then eventually the universe runs out of hydrogen and its fucked. Or the universe gets spread too thin, and its fucked. Or some fucking quantum field takes a shit, and creates a bubble of true vacuum that expands at the speed of light and everything’s fucked.
Im fucked, youre fucked, the earth is fucked, the solar system is fucked, the galaxy is fucked, the local cluster is fucked, its all just fucked. One way or another. At some point nothing exists except an endless absence of anything. Not even nothing will exist…
And people say there are no good arguments for weekly drug fuelled sex orgies…
This always blows my mind to think that we are here and we are experiencing this life and in the grand scheme of things its so fleeting, but that it all came from somewhere and its all going to die eventually. Could it really be true that there will just be nothing for eternity after this? Or are we not just a random chance in a previous eternity. Can we ever really know or is it all just our best guess?
Its humbling but also makes me feel even more like life is important and should be taken seriously.
You know, I often find myself coming at from the other direction. Trying not to take life too seriously, because after all in the end, nothing really matters. It matter now, of course. You and I sharing a conversation, matters. Well, as much as a conversion on a social media platform can without one or both of us showing our arseholes. But in the end, the very end, when theres no one left for us to have influenced. We… do that blade runner thing in the rain.
When I was a boy I used to stay at my grandmothers a lot. And it was there that I had my first taste of existential dread. She had this painting of a ship, an old schooner or something(I dont actually know the names of types of ships, so we’ll just go with that). It was this ship and it was in the middle of the ocean at night and riding the waves of a storm. And for whatever reason I saw, not only myself in this image, but also the world as a whole. I couldnt really understand what my brain was telling me, but it freaked me out. Seeing this ship in this framed moment of being alone in an endless nothing, and battered by elements with no hope or land in sight. And if the ship sank, no one would ever know it was ever there. It would be lost to time. Our world is that ship. Its alone in the dark, and surrounded on all sides by terrors both known and unknown. And at any moment, it could be dragged down to the depths and never seen again and all that we ever were or ever could be would be lost.
When got a bit older, and I found myself plagued by thoughts of embarrassment, as teenagers at want to do, I would remember that ship. And whatever it was that I wanted to do, I would do because as much as being in the storm terrified me, not steering into it and fighting for every moment would terrify me more. One day I will be at the bottom of that abyss, but right before that, Ill be on a bed. Ill be surrounded by family or I wont, and it will just be a loan nurse whose is tired of constantly fixing my pillows and hearing stories of when I was young, and you didnt need sun block factor 5000. And it will be that quiet moment that regret will get deafeningly loud. And while regret is just unavoidable, the absolute last thing I want to hear myself say is “I wish I had said something.”. Ill have a million “I wish I hadnt done that.”, and they will all be valid. But at least Ill know that it was the wrong thing, instead of always wondering what could have been. I think that if I took life more seriously, I might not have done anywhere near the amount of things that I did. And while they werent all winners, they were all brilliant moments of life. And as cringe as it can some times be to look back, it was always fun. Although, I probably could have done without seeing a middle aged man jumping out of a wardrobe in crotchless batman outfit… Id say never go home with strange older women in Brighton, but that would really undercut everything else I just said lol.
Life really is terrifying. Which is why you really just have to shit yourself and jump in to get most out of it.
We can’t truly know, our math still aims to several couple of extra physical dimensions and we have no other proof of that, our quantum physics show a glimpse of infinite universes and have no way of visiting them, probably ever.
We will die and the universe will continue its course like we never where here to begin with, since a repeat for any other lifeforms past, present and future.
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I had to google that lol.
Wait I’ve heard of the vacuum one but never understood it. Do you have a link (or the name of the doomsday theory) so I can read?
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/universe-false-vacuum
Long read, but it should have the answers for all your questions. Have fun! lol.
I just had a moment of what is everything
I don’t know how to explain it but from nothing to something to nothing again but no why
Its the whole “why is there anything at all” thing for me. Like why is there any energy to have made all of this. Couldn’t there just have never been anything at all? Nothing for anyone to experience. Its so hard to perceive and think about but its absolutely fascinating.
If the universe wouldn’t exist, you couldn’t ask yourself that question. So, by wondering “why is there anything at all” you have already answered the question: because otherwise you couldn’t even ask the question.
The ‘why’ is us.
Without consciousness in the universe, there might as well not be a universe.
Typically something a consciousness would say.
The cosmos can’t ponder itself so excuse us for being self centered lol
I’ve heard a funny story somewhere that god created the humans sothat they are worshipped. Because if nobody believes in them, they might as well not exist.
We are the cosmos pondering itself.
Carl Sagan said it more or this way and he was right.
It’s a cool axiom though. I mean if there’s nothing conscious to know the universe exists, like, so what? A universe needs life to matter to that life. Intrinsic mattering makes no sense. Things have to matter to other things that have the capacity to want or need. But without consciousness, those things might as well be like calculations in a computer.
to matter Why should it?
to that life Tautology
if a tree falls in yhe forest and no one is around to hear, does it make a sound?
Nope, only matters if we hear it.
Indeed. But it’s an axiom, not a tautology.
Not having consciousness might be the best thing that could happen to a universe. Just everything existing, without desire or suffering.
With a universe that peaceful, there might as well not be us.
Not having consciousness might be the best thing that could happen to a universe. Just everything existing, without desire or suffering.
With a universe that peaceful, there might as well not be us.
actually that’s precisely what buddhism is all about. there is no “i” in it all, the universe is a river of colors, flowing, transforming, but it is because we cling to the world that we create the illusion of an “i” ourselves.
There’s a cool video about this by exurb1a, i think it’s this one (but could also be another video, this dude made a lot of great videos.)
What would be the point of a universe if there was nothing experiencing it?
Who or what is it “best” for?
What is the “point” of this universe?
Us. Conscious creatures humans or otherwise. We are the genesis of “point”.
By analogy, what’s the point of a sun, or a planet, being a thing? It just is, right? A mechanism of nature.
Maybe we are do, but it’s undeniable tjsybwe experience reality. Experience is the only thing they can have a point, by definition. This is simply axiomatic.
There is no knowing a universe without knowers, so whether something just is, absent is, is a nonsense question. Sense to whom, after all?
Why does the universe need to be known?
What makes ‘us’ so special that the worth of a whole universe is determined by our existence, inspite of the brevity of human history? Written history has only been around for 5,000. The oldest homo sapiens has only been around for 300,000 years. Was the universe insignificant for the rest of its 13,799,700,000 years?
Maybe we are do, but it’s undeniable tjsybwe experience reality.
I’m sticking that as text over an image of Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
Well if its just backhoes life will evolve to see infrared/sonar
And dig plenty of holes
It’s just backhoes all the way down
One minor problem is that life as we know it is supported by the continuous input of energy from a nearby star. Without it, no photosynthesis, and nearly all primary energy production in Earth life comes from that.
The slightly bigger problem is that by the time there are only black holes, there are no planets. Because, you know, there’s only black holes. So nothing outside of black holes for life to be on, and the vacuum of space isn’t really the most conducive to life or interaction of any kind.
Entropy is the engine that sustains life.
We’re doing a pretty bang up job of making that one second as stupid and painful as possible.
One second of light illuminating a torture chamber
There are four lights.
Honestly, this factoid is the closest thing to a real Total Perspective Vortex that I’ve ever felt.
What’s that phenomenon that describes noticing things more after you become aware of them because I’m seeing a lot more Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy references than I remember now that I’ve started reading it
The last stars will burn out in 120 trillion years
We think. We still haven’t solved things like the dark matter/energy problem. The answer to that alone could drastically change what we estimate will happen in the distant future.
I mean, have you considered that the expansion of the universe generates or increases the total energy in the universe?
As stars move apart, they gain both potential energy with respect to other stars, because greater distance from gravity sources means greater potential energy, but they also gain kinetic energy as they accelerate away from other objects. So, their mechanical energy (potential + kinetic energy) increases over time. Maybe somebody could build a clever machine out of this to harvest that energy?
Stuff only burns for so long. We might learn more about the geometry of space and that there is more out there at greater distances where maybe even other Big bangs are possible but there is a certain maximum amount of time that a star can exist.
Over the time scales of the life of a proton the maximum variability in the amount of time a star can burn is a rounding error against the scale of numbers needed to express the amount of time it takes for hawking radiation to reduce black holes to ultra long wavelengths of infrared radiation.
Yes, but we don’t have proof that universe can’t generate new matter. For all we know there is a mechanism in universe not yet observed that can create new matter out of little vacuum and more stars will keep forming.
So technically all we can say is, it’s likely that stars will die out in 1000 trillion years.
Yes, but we don’t have proof that universe can’t generate new matter.
True… we also don’t have proof there isn’t a tea pot orbiting our Sun since it’s creation, either.
However, there’s also a complete lack of evidence of it.
You cannot prove a negative. The evidence says no new matter can be created. No evidence that new matter gets created. Therefore, we work on the model of no new matter creation.
But in this case, this “theory” has a precedent. This energy and matter we have now must have come from somewhere. Whatever your personal belief on the matter is, what’s to say that event can’t happen again? If a god created the universe, then surely he can pump some more into it.
Matter and energy can be converted. So, its possible it was never created, it just always was.
That’s something I’ll never be able to understand. Something having no beginning. Just like I’ll never be able to understand a moment before the big bang, or at the moment of the singularity, where time did could not exist. If there’s no time, how can anything, like the big bang, happen? Unfortunately the singularity is something we know nothing about whatsoever, and probably will never know.
On these scales, the accuracy of our observations should reduce our confidence though. It doesn’t make sense to confidently say that, in 200 trillion years there will be no stars, because our observations of the rate of new matter creation (approximately zero) have a margin of error which allows for there to still be some
Until evidence shows otherwise, new matter being created doesnt fit our observations.
Go prove that wrong! Win yourself a Nobel prize in physics! That’s what science is about!
I do also want to point out that stuff like “The conservation of energy” law, in other words, that energy cannot be created or destroyed, does not hold for our universe with our current models. An expanding universe violates the time-translation symmetry
This is our current models. This is what our current physics says. And we know it’s incomplete.
When it comes to scientific predictions, you always, always, need the caveat, “under our current model of”.
Space itself expanding doesnt, however…
New matter being created with extremely low probability fits perfectly with our observations.
A teapot created with out solar system orbiting the sun fits our models, with an extremely low probability.
However, we dont work on that assumption being true.
So if all the existing matter came from the big Bang, is it possible to condense it all back into one place?
pretty sure that is the big crunch hypothesis
Sure! Big crunch is a possibility! Crunch or heat death, all matters on how much matter is in the universe.
like how we thought black holes were ever-growing inescapable masses and then we learned about hawking radiation.
We also haven’t tried every possible configuration of atoms to see if anything creates a portal to an infinite energy dimension or a perpetual motion machine or something we can use to make our own stars
Infinite energy is cheating. Same with travelling backwards in time.
My intuition tells me the universe doesn’t allow cheaters.
But then I’m just an evolved bag of water cells clinging onto a clump of rock so what the fuck do I know?
Time travel is allowed for under our current models. Or rather, time travel doesn’t affect most parts of the current models, so it’s not cheating.
We can only time travel to the future or i am wrong?
Currently yes, but there’s nothing inherent in there that’s says there’s no way for us to move backwards
I once reas a theory abou you needing to go faster than the speed of light which is not possible theorically
PS: i am not a scientist i don’t know much, only some basic shit i learned for curiosity
Yeah for all we know stars are black hole poop
Nah, that’s the heavier elements.
wait, i thought the heavier elements were star poop, and black holes poop either electrons or positrons i can’t remember.
Only up to iron is star poop. Anything heavier tends to be created by novae of various sizes. Technically nothing comes from the black hole, but many of the very heavy elements are birthed along side black holes.
Gravity and time come from every black hole. Neither of those are “things” in the sense that they aren’t matter. So don’t think I’m saying that you are any kind of wrong. Perhaps “thing” might be to vague to be technically accurate, though.
Everyone here seems oblique in a vision of nothing in perspective, though. Come on, where do you think a big bang came from?
There’s a cap limit to the size of a black hole because it will pop. Moreover, “The” is rather an inappropriate reference to a big bang. You might say “our” but infinity doesn’t mean what you think it means. Not due to any “limit” but due to math through adjacent dimensions you’re only just start to deduce the “obvious” nature of and think to look at. “How” is a whole other Giggle Maestro.
If you need to understand how many dimensions there are…then you will never stop looking. Infinity is way more than we can but get a notion of.
Tangentially related great sci-fi short story: “The Last Question” by Isaac Asimov: https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html
Thanks for that. I’ve read it before, long ago, but completely forgot about it. Still a great story.
I feel like reading this story is an internet nerd Rite of Passage. It had a huge impact on me when I read it as a teenager and I think about it a lot.
Probably my favorite short story. This is another one of my favorites, definitely more obscure:
What happens after the 10^106 years of black holes?
🤷🏻
The black holes evaporate eventually.
After that, depends on who you ask. Most physicists would say something like “as close to nothing as possible”. Penrose would say at a certain point when nothing can interact with anything else, distance loses meaning, which makes the universe and a singularity equivalent, so then things restart.
Not sure about the “restart” bit.
If it’s mathematically equivalent to the starting conditions of our universe, why would it behave differently?
I don’t think you can argue that it’s mathematically equivalent. Just because space and time become so spread that they are effectively meaningless is not the same as them having not meaningfully existed and then existing. Neither can you really say that since any baryons that have not decayed are so far apart none of them interact that they behave like the concentration of all matter in the known universe. At those scales of time I’m not even sure that there are any left.
It’s like arguing that one tiny piece of something in one place is the same as all the matter and all of space and time being in one place: it’s I guess analogous but not equivalent. I will of course caveat and say that my undergrad physics degree did not cover end of the universe timelines lol. Kurzgesagt does have a video though.
The cyclical universe approach as I understand it is predicated on an eventual big crunch which I don’t think is being argued anymore.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he’s right. I just thought the objection was to the “restart bit”, and I thought that part reasonably followed if the earlier parts were accepted.
But Penrose’s Conformal Cyclic Cosmology is pretty much the opposite of a Big Crunch.
I guess I’ll have to read up. I have potentially had a long running misunderstanding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC2JOQ7z5L0
The cyclical universe approach as I understand it is predicated on an eventual big crunch which I don’t think is being argued anymore.
The universe is definitely cyclical, the only real question is: how?
There’s lots of theories: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoCYY9sa2kU
Unless it’s been disproven it’s not “not being argued anymore”
Yeah I also think it would take a lot more than just one single bit of discrete information in an universe of completely uniform and homogeneous nothingness, to restart the universe lol /s
Because things haven’t progressed linearly with the universes evolution, and, as the op stipulates, we are part of one second vs countless billions of years (relatively) till it’s theoretical demise, it is possible/probable that we don’t know what will happen down the line.
Certain things might change to make it possible that we simply can’t predict due to lack of information (the future) and technological difficulties.
Nothing really. And since nothing is happening and nothing ever changes time itself becomes meaningless.
From what I understand, the universe would just be in equilibrium. Nothing but cold particles floating around.
A recent discovery might suggest that we happen to be in a big void, and that a great amount of the universe is much much denser than where we are or what we have observed. If true, Big Crunch time bby
Yes.
Alternately, no.
Yoink
Thus began the Age of Fire. But soon the flames will fade and only Dark will remain.
every soul has its dark
Just like every Knight praise the sun.
If only I could be so grossly incandescent!
Unless that Knight is onion flavored, they just die :(
Unless, of course, that onion knight has a lot of experience in other professions, in which case they can easily punch gods to death.
