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Just thinking about this gets me on the verge of a panic attack.

by zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago

eru 3y ago
Don't dwell on the heat death of the universe for too long, either, then.
- A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
  I wouldn't worry about it. The heat death of the universe isn't the end. The Second Law is a statistical, not an absolute, law. So, even after heat death, structures of all sizes will randomly emerge on large enough timescales. (Read: effectively infinite timescales -- timescales large enough to make Graham's Number look like a small number.) Wait long enough, and you'll get Boltzmann Brains, Boltzmann planets, and even Boltzmann galaxies. All sorts of things. In many respects, the universe after heat death is more interesting than the universe before heat death --- it's an unbound infinite probability space.
  - im3w1l 3y ago
    I agree about the second law, but aren't there also other reasons to expect gloom and doom? Like an ever decreasing energy/mass density as everything drifts away into infinity? I dont think thats a question of probabilities but rather something that must happen based on the equations of motion?
    - A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
      Entropy is a measure of the number of possible states. In unbounded/infinite time, all states will be cycled through. However diffuse, all particles in space will be akin to H2O molecules in an ocean of water: they will move freely, interacting with each other, each assuming any number of positions. In an idealized ocean in boundless time, every H2O molecule will occupy every possible position, and then every possible configuration will repeat. Post heat-death, the number of possible states that describe maximally (or near-maximally) disordered and diffuse systems is almost -- but not quite -- infinitely larger than the number of possible states which describe structures of some sort, indeed of any possible sort, emerging. That "not quite" does a lot of work, in view of unending time. So, in boundless space, in boundless time, should protons and other elementary particles not decay, very interesting things will still come into existence with some degree of statistical regularity.
      - im3w1l 3y ago
        > all states will be cycled through That's only true if there are finitely many states.
        eru 3y ago
        Not sure. You can cycle through all integers an infinite number of times each, if you have infinite amount of time. An example in Python: import itertools for limit in itertools.count(): for i in range(limit): print(i)

Just thinking about this gets me on the verge of a panic attack.

eru 3y ago

Don't dwell on the heat death of the universe for too long, either, then.

A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
I wouldn't worry about it. The heat death of the universe isn't the end. The Second Law is a statistical, not an absolute, law. So, even after heat death, structures of all sizes will randomly emerge on large enough timescales. (Read: effectively infinite timescales -- timescales large enough to make Graham's Number look like a small number.) Wait long enough, and you'll get Boltzmann Brains, Boltzmann planets, and even Boltzmann galaxies. All sorts of things. In many respects, the universe after heat death is more interesting than the universe before heat death --- it's an unbound infinite probability space.
- im3w1l 3y ago
  I agree about the second law, but aren't there also other reasons to expect gloom and doom? Like an ever decreasing energy/mass density as everything drifts away into infinity? I dont think thats a question of probabilities but rather something that must happen based on the equations of motion?
  - A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
    Entropy is a measure of the number of possible states. In unbounded/infinite time, all states will be cycled through. However diffuse, all particles in space will be akin to H2O molecules in an ocean of water: they will move freely, interacting with each other, each assuming any number of positions. In an idealized ocean in boundless time, every H2O molecule will occupy every possible position, and then every possible configuration will repeat. Post heat-death, the number of possible states that describe maximally (or near-maximally) disordered and diffuse systems is almost -- but not quite -- infinitely larger than the number of possible states which describe structures of some sort, indeed of any possible sort, emerging. That "not quite" does a lot of work, in view of unending time. So, in boundless space, in boundless time, should protons and other elementary particles not decay, very interesting things will still come into existence with some degree of statistical regularity.
    - im3w1l 3y ago
      > all states will be cycled through That's only true if there are finitely many states.
      - eru 3y ago
        Not sure. You can cycle through all integers an infinite number of times each, if you have infinite amount of time. An example in Python: import itertools for limit in itertools.count(): for i in range(limit): print(i)