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How Will the Universe End?
- inphovore 4y agoCold death! One trillion years from now, matter and potential shall be so far dispersed, composite mass floats as dry cinder upon momentum of expansive cosmic debris. Use the time you have!
- rrgok 4y agoI hope soon.
- belter 4y agoMaybe the premise of the proposition is faulty from the start. It will not end as it never started. It was always here and it always be as the Universe of his own name. What would be then after it's death? And when after it's death, there is nothing, quantum fluctuations will bring something from nothing. We will be all back here...Furiously replying on parent comments on HN stories with a 14 Billion years delay... "How could our universe suddenly appear out of nothingness?" - https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/16376/how-could-our-universe-suddenly-appear-out-of-nothingness https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/16376/how-cou... "Did the Big Bang happen at a point?" - https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/136860/did-the-big-bang-happen-at-a-point https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/136860/did-the-b...
- jareklupinski 4y agomy theory is that a "deja vu" occurs when you encounter an uncannily close return to something that happened innumerous times in the past
- dinkleberg 4y agoMy infinite lives must be on average rather boring then lol. I usually get deja vu in the most mundane situations like going down a path of thinking while driving or telling (retelling?) a story when I’m out with friends.
- jareklupinski 4y agoon average; the heads and tails of the bell curve most likely approach infinite levels of adventure :)
- shagie 4y agoI'd recommend reading the short story All the Myriad Ways by Niven ( https://archive.org/details/Galaxy_v27n03_1968-10/page/n31/mode/2up?view=theater https://archive.org/details/Galaxy_v27n03_1968-10/page/n31/m... ) and Anathem by Neal Stephenson (which is much longer than a short story). Also on the subject, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortalit...
- recondite 4y agoObligatory mention of Asimov's "Last Question" https://astronomy.org/moravian/C00-Last%20Question.pdf https://astronomy.org/moravian/C00-Last%20Question.pdf
- dinkleberg 4y agoIf you want a great narration of this by Leonard Nimoy: https://youtu.be/8XOtx4sa9k4 https://youtu.be/8XOtx4sa9k4
- throwaway81523 4y agoAlso, "Last Contact" by Stephen Baxter, 2008 Hugo Nominee for best short story (around 4k words): https://web.archive.org/web/20080725045740/http://www.solarisbooks.com/books/newbookscifi/last-contact.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20080725045740/http://www.solari...
- nsxwolf 4y agoAre quantum fluctuations "nothing"? Can "nothing" fluctuate? What is fluctuating?
- belter 4y ago"A Mathematical Proof That The Universe Could Have Formed Spontaneously From Nothing" - https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/a-mathematical-proof-that-the-universe-could-have-formed-spontaneously-from-nothing-ed7ed0f304a3#:~:text=Cosmologists%20assume%20that%20natural%20quantum,began%20in%20a%20Big%20Bang https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/a-mathematical-pro....
- nsxwolf 4y ago"In each of these cases, they find a solution in which the bubble can expand exponentially and thereby reach a size in which a universe can form—a Big Bang." So, it's contingent upon a "bubble" forming, which is not nothing but rather something. They have not claimed to prove how the universe formed spontaneously from a bubble, not nothing.
- belter 4y agoIt's the discussion between physicists and philosophers from my second link. For philosophers the nothing can exist, but for physicists the whole quantum thing, makes the nothing of the philosophers a non reality...
- puffybuf 4y agoI think the idea is that ‘something’ must exist by necessity. Sort of like how logical truths are eternal and have no beginning: the laws which make up matter appear to follow mathematical (logical) rules, so maybe matter in some sense is eternal as well.
- AmVess 4y agoSeems to me this would be the reality. Always been here, always will be here. Eventually the stars use all their fuel and the universe goes dark. Don't fret! The recycling bins of the universe are there. A giant black hole becomes large enough to keep growing and boom! Another big bang to reignite energy.
- GalenErso 4y agoThe ancients were right all along. Power, here, failed the deep imagining: but already my desire and will were rolled, like a wheel that is turned, equally, by the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars. - Paradiso, Canto XXXIII
- puffybuf 4y agoIf the universe is infinitely large everything that can happen will happen, an infinite number of times.
- timcavel 4y ago[dead]
- sharkweek 4y agoOne of my favorite YouTube videos does a great job with visuals and voiceovers about what will happen over the next trillions x trillions of years: https://youtu.be/uD4izuDMUQA https://youtu.be/uD4izuDMUQA No idea how accurate it is against anything that might be more theoretically accurate but it’s still a great watch.
- zikduruqe 4y agoThis is a superb video. When I saw the post, I was going to recommend it also.
- matheusd 4y agoMy favorite site re: end of the world/universe is the old timer http://exitmundi.nl http://exitmundi.nl
- 752963e64 4y ago[dead]
- bmitc 4y agoIt's an interesting idea to ponder a question about an event that no species from this planet will ever experience.
- sizzzzlerz 4y agoPossibly excepting Keith Richards.
- belter 4y ago'I’ll write all your epitaphs!' - Keith Richards
- im3w1l 4y agoMaybe whatever comes after will preserve a few of us in like a reserve. You know out of nostalgia.
- potamic 4y agoWhat I find mind blowing is that a bunch of hydrogen atoms in a corner of the universe have somehow gained awareness as to figure out how the universe will come to an end.
- d_tr 4y agoAfter getting fused inside a star which later exploded. We 've been through some shit.
- languagehacker 4y agoAs a solipsist, the universe will end when I die
- jareklupinski 4y agoas another solipsist: not if i can help it :P
- LetsGetTechnicl 4y agoWith a whisper
- TwoNineA 4y agoMy favorite end of the universe is heat death when entropy reaches the maximum and it can no longer increase. From this moment on (pun intended) time has no longer a meaning and it will be impossible to tell the passage of time. Time will cease to exist.
- mikub 4y agoWhen I read about the death of the universe I always ask myself, why any of the things we do on this little planet would matter, not that I'm not enjoying it here sometimes. But if you think about it we are already pretty insignificant compared to the 'size' of the universe, but if you start thinking about 'time' that's really crazy. I mean no matter what you accomplish down here, nobody will remember it in a few million years, and in a few billion years, everything will be gone. So anything ever accomplished will be lost for all eternity. But on the other hand if you die one day it propably doesn't matter for you anymore if one day goes by, or a billion years. So somehow your universe already dies when you die. :)
- lordfrito 4y agoThis philosophy (and some existentialism) helps me deal with meaningless of it all. [1]. Find personal meaning in spite of things, let that be enough. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism
- mikub 4y agoYes, that and still be curious about the things happening around you. I mean, if nothing really matters it can also take the pressure off.
- kwanbix 4y agoHow can we know what is going to happen to something we don't know about? I mean, 99% of what we "know" about the universe is pure theory or speculation. Or what am I missing here?
- mikub 4y agoWell I was talking from what science currently says will happen to the universe, if there maybe is anything else beyond that I cannot say. But I'm more than happy to find out if my day has come, until then I try to make the best out of things.
- ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
- bradwood 4y agoWhich universe?
- CottonMcKnight 4y agoAlways love an opportunity to link to my favorite Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future
- ly3xqhl8g9 4y agoThere is also the page for Sphaleron [1] (only 60,200 Google Search results); good name for a start-up: sphaleron.io — hypothetical technologies made real. The sphaleron is probably tied to proton decay [2], which is probably the saddest and most sobering possible fact in the entire universe: all this is fundamentally temporary, it will all go away, even the protons. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphaleron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphaleron [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_decay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_decay
- paulpauper 4y agolots of iron in store for the future, apparently
- paulpauper 4y agoSo in other words, no one knows, but with some bias in favor of heat death. I remember reading a book 2 decades ago that offered a similar set of outcomes.
- pipingdog 4y agoThe universe ends when entropy reaches maximum and all information takes the form of popular science articles.
- nealabq 4y agoIn this ever expanding universe in which we live in, it seems there is stuff at the distance edge of our light cone, red-shifting past our causality horizon as it slips away from us at greater than the speed of light. For them our reality has already ended, and for us, theirs. The same for those who fall past a black hole horizon. We see their experience of our time as slowing and ending. As they see us.
- d_tr 4y agoIsaac Arthur has an entertaining "Civilizations at the End of Time" series https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIIOUpOge0LvHsTP5fm8oxB1qPS54sTMk https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIIOUpOge0LvHsTP5fm8oxB1q...
- 1bent 4y agoI love Robert Frost's poem "Fire and Ice" on this topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_and_Ice_%28poem%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_and_Ice_%28poem%29
- memalign 4y agoMaybe it’ll be like this: https://pbfcomics.com/comics/reset/ https://pbfcomics.com/comics/reset/