8 ms·

The “heat death” hypothesis might not hold

38 points by Hooke 4y ago

chongli 4y ago
Won’t the universe run out of hydrogen?
Dave3of5 4y ago
Phew! I was getting worried there.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bitwize 4y ago
Instead of heat death, the universe will instantly disappear and be replaced with something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
- birriel 4y ago
  I've considered this possibility, but only in the context of the simulation hypothesis. Could you elaborate on what you mean?
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    > There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. > There is another theory which states that this has already happened. ― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
- snapcaster 4y ago
  Some even say this has already happened before
  - panax 4y ago
    The probability of a bubble nucleation from false vacuum decay[1] is astronomically low, but the probability that it has already happened is still non-zero. If it did happen we would never know, but if it reached us then we would all be destroyed in an instant. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum_decay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum_decay
Aqueous 4y ago
Either I'm confused or the article is. Article seems to keep relating higher complexity to higher organization. But higher complexity is tied to higher entropy and disorganization, not higher organization. Generally, more complexity equals more entropy and less organization. Outside of certain possible exceptions like life (which still obeys it through waste product), is this not true? It certainly seems to be that way in code, anyway.
- simiones 4y ago
  No, the article is very explicit. In the traditional statements of the second law, higher entropy is indeed seen as lower organization. However, the article is stating that this is not an accurate view of the mathematics - and that a more accurate view merely requires more disorganized distribution of energy, while matter may be arbitrarily better organized and still have its entropy increase. For example, crystalization of a material does not necessarily decrease its entropy, as long as the crystal formation dissipates heat.
  - andrewflnr 4y ago
    I find this unconvincing. If the energy in your organized matter is not itself organized, the matter is not going to be moving in an organized way, which means it's dead.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  The second law only applies to thermodynamic entropy, which has to do with the variety of ways that energy can be distributed among microstates (like maybe this electron is excited to 2 eV and that one is excited 3 eV) for a given microstate description (like "the sample is in the liquid phase"). It's tempting to simplify the universe like any other system: one for which microstate descriptions will have a fixed number of microstates across which the available energy will eventually be distributed more or less evenly. But perhaps that's a bad simplification. The article says as much, but in the middle of a bunch of claims about order and disorder. So what's confusing about the article is it's attempt to describe the... confusion, that the new interpretation leads us away from.
- 4y ago
jfengel 4y ago
I don't get why people worry about "heat death" in 10^30 years. You're going to undergo "plain old death" in 10^1 years, times a constant that is almost certainly not much larger than 10. I comprehend an abstract scientific interest in it -- a positive emotion of wonder. But any negative emotional connection feels like projecting right-here-now depression. It would be healthier to deal with the actual issue rather than maundering about on something that is not the real driving cause.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  Because it offends the senses not to be prepared for the Y10^30 Bug when we know about it now.
  - gonzo41 4y ago
    All ready for that Y1000K bug right.
    - Waterluvian 4y ago
      Got my matches. Got my gas can.
    - HideousKojima 4y ago
      Microsoft-Google-Walmart-America will put off updating the DateTime type in .NET 583271 until December, 9998 and expect developers to migrate all of their existing codebases in just over a year. If you're wondering why the version number for .NET is so high, they had to skip ~500,000 version numbers to avoid some weird issue that would break backward compatibility.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  Because it means that nothing humans build matters and even if we beat all other obstacles and colonize the galaxy it’s all for nothing.
  - jurimasa 4y ago
xyzal 4y ago
Dammit, I just about came to terms that life has no point, and now such a surprise?
vogon_laureate 4y ago
“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
- finnh 4y ago
  name checks out
romnon 4y ago
It is seems there is yet insufficient data for meaningful answer.
simiones 4y ago
It's interesting to note that applying the second law of thermodynamics to the whole universe, even if we didn't know about expansion, yields one of the biggest disconnects between prediction and observation since the ultraviolet catastrophe. If the second law applied to the whole universe, we should expect the Big Bang to have been quickly followed by a heat death. Having the entire universe we see today become so extraordinarily well organized from an initial glob of hot uniform plasma would have an inexpressably small probability. It seems far more likely to say that, for as yet un-determined reasons, the second law can't apply to the universe as a whole, only to certain subsets of it. Might also suggest that the problem of black hole entropy is not actually settled, and that black holes could in fact simply reduce entropy instead of emitting Hawking radiation. Also, it's interesting to note that expansion of the universe actually "breaks" the first law of thermodynamics: energy is not actually being conserved, new energy is being created. This can happen because the first law of thermodynamics only applies in a fixed size space, while in the expansion model we believe that space itself (the coordinate system, as it were) is expanding.
- reedjosh 4y ago
  I love this perspective. Not all physical laws have been proven in the grand scale of the universe, yet we narrow mindedly assume every one of these laws always hold -- I mean they're laws right!? -- and then we base all theories on what could be misconceptions. And realizing this makes theoretical physics much more interesting as there are so many more possibilities to how reality works than what's proscribed. I also wonder how much of our dogmatic adherence to these laws are preventing us from progressing.
- simonh 4y ago
  Is new energy really being crated by the expansion of space though? I know the vacuum energy increases, but would the increased negative gravitational potential energy cancel it out?
  - spiralx 4y ago
    Yes, the net energy of the Universe is zero.
psychoslave 4y ago
>This bleak idea is known as the “heat death hypothesis,” and the prophecy foretells a future where all pattern and organization has ceased to be. In this cosmological model, everything must come to an end. There is simply no possibility for continual existence. Even taking this scenario for granted, the universe certainly will still very exist. Finally, no war anywhere anymore. Peace and stillness forever is the ultimate fate of the grand scheme of things, who could sanely complain? :D
taylodl 4y ago
Humanity is going to have problems far sooner than the heat death of the universe - the increasing heat of the sun. As our sun enters the last half of its life it's going to start burning hotter (and no, this is not the cause of today's global climate change). In 100 million years or so earth will be uninhabitable by most mammals, certainly humans. In 1 billion years the oceans will have boiled away. So all humanity has to do is move to another star, right? Well, that's not a long-term solution. First, our sun is a main sequence star. It's very average, meaning most of the stars in our galaxy are just like it and they're the same age, i.e. they're going to "die" at roughly the same time. The inner, rocky planets we prefer will be uninhabitable. We might find a moon on an outer gas giant to our liking. But all that supposes we could even get there - which isn't likely. Space is mind-boggling vast. The nearest star is 4 light years away. The average star you see in the night sky is 60 to 100 light years away. Even if we had the technology to travel at (near) the speed of light it would take six years to get to the nearest star. Why? It takes one year at 1G acceleration to reach the speed of light and one year of 1G deceleration to slow down to reach your destination. Of course you're going to need a shield to protect you from the gamma rays you just transformed all the light you're approaching into and since you need more shielding to protect from the gamma rays you need more energy to maintain the acceleration - you quickly realize you can't get enough energy to power even a modest spacecraft. Sadly then, it looks like going to the stars is out of the question. Our sun is it, and in 100 million years or so it will make our home planet uninhabitable (though we're trying our best to make it uninhabitable long before that!) You have to realize humanity is going to go extinct. There's a maximum timeline for our existence. That's why I say AI and robots will be our progeny. They're the ones that will have to contend with the heat death of the universe.

38 points by Hooke 4y ago

chongli 4y ago

Won’t the universe run out of hydrogen?

Dave3of5 4y ago

Phew! I was getting worried there.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bitwize 4y ago

Instead of heat death, the universe will instantly disappear and be replaced with something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

birriel 4y ago
I've considered this possibility, but only in the context of the simulation hypothesis. Could you elaborate on what you mean?
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  > There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. > There is another theory which states that this has already happened. ― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
snapcaster 4y ago
Some even say this has already happened before
- panax 4y ago
  The probability of a bubble nucleation from false vacuum decay[1] is astronomically low, but the probability that it has already happened is still non-zero. If it did happen we would never know, but if it reached us then we would all be destroyed in an instant. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum_decay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum_decay

Aqueous 4y ago

Either I'm confused or the article is. Article seems to keep relating higher complexity to higher organization. But higher complexity is tied to higher entropy and disorganization, not higher organization. Generally, more complexity equals more entropy and less organization. Outside of certain possible exceptions like life (which still obeys it through waste product), is this not true? It certainly seems to be that way in code, anyway.

simiones 4y ago
No, the article is very explicit. In the traditional statements of the second law, higher entropy is indeed seen as lower organization. However, the article is stating that this is not an accurate view of the mathematics - and that a more accurate view merely requires more disorganized distribution of energy, while matter may be arbitrarily better organized and still have its entropy increase. For example, crystalization of a material does not necessarily decrease its entropy, as long as the crystal formation dissipates heat.
- andrewflnr 4y ago
  I find this unconvincing. If the energy in your organized matter is not itself organized, the matter is not going to be moving in an organized way, which means it's dead.
__MatrixMan__ 4y ago
The second law only applies to thermodynamic entropy, which has to do with the variety of ways that energy can be distributed among microstates (like maybe this electron is excited to 2 eV and that one is excited 3 eV) for a given microstate description (like "the sample is in the liquid phase"). It's tempting to simplify the universe like any other system: one for which microstate descriptions will have a fixed number of microstates across which the available energy will eventually be distributed more or less evenly. But perhaps that's a bad simplification. The article says as much, but in the middle of a bunch of claims about order and disorder. So what's confusing about the article is it's attempt to describe the... confusion, that the new interpretation leads us away from.
4y ago

jfengel 4y ago

I don't get why people worry about "heat death" in 10^30 years. You're going to undergo "plain old death" in 10^1 years, times a constant that is almost certainly not much larger than 10. I comprehend an abstract scientific interest in it -- a positive emotion of wonder. But any negative emotional connection feels like projecting right-here-now depression. It would be healthier to deal with the actual issue rather than maundering about on something that is not the real driving cause.

Waterluvian 4y ago
Because it offends the senses not to be prepared for the Y10^30 Bug when we know about it now.
- gonzo41 4y ago
  All ready for that Y1000K bug right.
  - Waterluvian 4y ago
    Got my matches. Got my gas can.
  - HideousKojima 4y ago
    Microsoft-Google-Walmart-America will put off updating the DateTime type in .NET 583271 until December, 9998 and expect developers to migrate all of their existing codebases in just over a year. If you're wondering why the version number for .NET is so high, they had to skip ~500,000 version numbers to avoid some weird issue that would break backward compatibility.
edgyquant 4y ago
Because it means that nothing humans build matters and even if we beat all other obstacles and colonize the galaxy it’s all for nothing.
- jurimasa 4y ago

xyzal 4y ago

Dammit, I just about came to terms that life has no point, and now such a surprise?

vogon_laureate 4y ago

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams

finnh 4y ago
name checks out

romnon 4y ago

It is seems there is yet insufficient data for meaningful answer.

simiones 4y ago

It's interesting to note that applying the second law of thermodynamics to the whole universe, even if we didn't know about expansion, yields one of the biggest disconnects between prediction and observation since the ultraviolet catastrophe. If the second law applied to the whole universe, we should expect the Big Bang to have been quickly followed by a heat death. Having the entire universe we see today become so extraordinarily well organized from an initial glob of hot uniform plasma would have an inexpressably small probability. It seems far more likely to say that, for as yet un-determined reasons, the second law can't apply to the universe as a whole, only to certain subsets of it. Might also suggest that the problem of black hole entropy is not actually settled, and that black holes could in fact simply reduce entropy instead of emitting Hawking radiation. Also, it's interesting to note that expansion of the universe actually "breaks" the first law of thermodynamics: energy is not actually being conserved, new energy is being created. This can happen because the first law of thermodynamics only applies in a fixed size space, while in the expansion model we believe that space itself (the coordinate system, as it were) is expanding.

reedjosh 4y ago
I love this perspective. Not all physical laws have been proven in the grand scale of the universe, yet we narrow mindedly assume every one of these laws always hold -- I mean they're laws right!? -- and then we base all theories on what could be misconceptions. And realizing this makes theoretical physics much more interesting as there are so many more possibilities to how reality works than what's proscribed. I also wonder how much of our dogmatic adherence to these laws are preventing us from progressing.
simonh 4y ago
Is new energy really being crated by the expansion of space though? I know the vacuum energy increases, but would the increased negative gravitational potential energy cancel it out?
- spiralx 4y ago
  Yes, the net energy of the Universe is zero.

psychoslave 4y ago

>This bleak idea is known as the “heat death hypothesis,” and the prophecy foretells a future where all pattern and organization has ceased to be. In this cosmological model, everything must come to an end. There is simply no possibility for continual existence. Even taking this scenario for granted, the universe certainly will still very exist. Finally, no war anywhere anymore. Peace and stillness forever is the ultimate fate of the grand scheme of things, who could sanely complain? :D

taylodl 4y ago

Humanity is going to have problems far sooner than the heat death of the universe - the increasing heat of the sun. As our sun enters the last half of its life it's going to start burning hotter (and no, this is not the cause of today's global climate change). In 100 million years or so earth will be uninhabitable by most mammals, certainly humans. In 1 billion years the oceans will have boiled away. So all humanity has to do is move to another star, right? Well, that's not a long-term solution. First, our sun is a main sequence star. It's very average, meaning most of the stars in our galaxy are just like it and they're the same age, i.e. they're going to "die" at roughly the same time. The inner, rocky planets we prefer will be uninhabitable. We might find a moon on an outer gas giant to our liking. But all that supposes we could even get there - which isn't likely. Space is mind-boggling vast. The nearest star is 4 light years away. The average star you see in the night sky is 60 to 100 light years away. Even if we had the technology to travel at (near) the speed of light it would take six years to get to the nearest star. Why? It takes one year at 1G acceleration to reach the speed of light and one year of 1G deceleration to slow down to reach your destination. Of course you're going to need a shield to protect you from the gamma rays you just transformed all the light you're approaching into and since you need more shielding to protect from the gamma rays you need more energy to maintain the acceleration - you quickly realize you can't get enough energy to power even a modest spacecraft. Sadly then, it looks like going to the stars is out of the question. Our sun is it, and in 100 million years or so it will make our home planet uninhabitable (though we're trying our best to make it uninhabitable long before that!) You have to realize humanity is going to go extinct. There's a maximum timeline for our existence. That's why I say AI and robots will be our progeny. They're the ones that will have to contend with the heat death of the universe.