3 ms·
Why, so we can extend the 10^78 years? I'm not sure you truly understand how large 10^78 years is, or even 10^10 years.
by mykowebhn 1y ago
Why, so we can extend the 10^78 years? I'm not sure you truly understand how large 10^78 years is, or even 10^10 years.
- suddenlybananas 1y agoWhile it seems doubtful that people will last that long, in 10^78 years, one would think those people alive at the time would want the universe to continue.
- rswail 1y agoHumanity has existed for 3x10^6 years (give or take), which is 1 x 10^-72 of that time period. We don't need to worry, it is highly unlikely that humanity as we recognize it will exist.
- mykowebhn 1y agoAgreed. It is so highly unlikely that the probability is effectively zero. Let's give everyone the benefit of the doubt and assume that humanity can exist a thousand times longer than your estimate, say 3x10^9 years. That's about as long as we think life has existed on earth, which is a VERY LONG TIME. That said, it's still 1 x 10^-69 of that time period. I think you can see where we're going with this.
- cdelsolar 1y agoit won't be humanity, but it should hopefully be some sort of intelligence
- mykowebhn 1y agoNo offense intended, but I have a serious question: Why would you hope this? This hope seems to me a vestige of the desire of some humans for immortality. And why would it matter to folks whether some sort of intelligence existed this incomprehensibly far into the future?
- b112 1y agoImagine if we solve it. Then hope to preserve the answer long enough, that people will care. The first problem is data integrity and storage. Will the atoms the answer is on, still be around? The next is, what kind of search engine will we have, with 10^78 years of internet history?!
- pixl97 1y agoI think a bigger question is what will they do for that long? All the things like stars will be long gone and dead before that time leaving us with long lived black holes and radiation. So everything would be based on virtual world can computation by that point. Do you just cool everything to near absolute zero and run it as slow as possible to you can last as long as possible? The History of the Universe channel has an episode around this, but I'll have to figure out which one it was.
- b112 1y agoThey'll exist because of Wan-To. The World at the End of Time by Frederick Pohl.
- floxy 1y agoPresumably civilization will be using iron stars by then? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_star#Compact_iron_star_formation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_star#Compact_iron_star_fo... ...although I'm not sure I've ever seen the expected temperature of iron stars. 1 milliKelvin?