4 ms·
You must consider both time and locality. From now until protons decay and matter does not exist anymore is only 10^56 nanoseconds.
by u1hcw9nx 8mo ago
You must consider both time and locality.
From now until protons decay and matter does not exist anymore is only 10^56 nanoseconds.
- rbanffy 8mo agoIf we think of the many worlds interpretation, how many universes will we be making every time we assign a CCUID to something?
- antonvs 8mo agoWe don't "make" universes in the MWI. The universal wavefunction evolves to include all reachable quantum states. It's deterministic, because it encompasses all allowed possibilities.
- petcat 8mo ago> many worlds interpretation These are only namespaces. Many worlds can have all the same (many) random numbers and they will never conflict with each other!
- shiandow 8mo agoIn that interpretation the total number of worlds does not change.
- rubyn00bie 8mo agoI got a big laugh at the “only” part of that. I do have a sincere question about that number though, isn’t time relative? How would we know that number to be true or consistent? My incredibly naive assumption would be that with less matter time moves faster sort of accelerating; so, as matter “evaporates” the process accelerates and converges on that number (or close it)?
- zamadatix 8mo agoTimes for things like "age of the universe" are usually given as "cosmic time" for this reason. If it's about a specific object (e.g. "how long until a day on Earth lasts 25 hours") it's usually given in "proper time" for that object. Other observers/reference frames may perceive time differently, but in the normal relativistic sense rather than a "it all needs to wind itself back up to be equal in the end" sense.
- idiotsecant 8mo agoThe local reference frame (which is what matters for proton decay) doesn't see an outside world moving slower or faster depending on how much mass is around it to any significant degree until you start adding a lot of mass very close around.
- scotty79 8mo agoProton decay is hypothetical.
- hamdingers 8mo agoSo is the need for cosmologically unique IDs. We're having fun.
- Etheryte 8mo agoThat's such an odd way to use units. Why would you do 10^56 * 10^-9 seconds?
- lisper 8mo agoThis was my thought. Nanoseconds are an eternity. You want to be using Planck units for your worst-case analysis.
- u1hcw9nx 8mo agoIf you go far beyond nanoseconds, energy becomes a limiting factor. You can only achieve ultra-fast processing if you dedicate vast amounts of matter to heat dissipation and energy generation. Think on a galactic scale: you cannot have even have molecular reaction speeds occurring at femtosecond or attosecond speeds constantly and everywhere without overheating everything.
- lisper 8mo agoMaybe. It's not clear whether these are fundamental limits or merely technological ones. Reversible (i.e. infinitely efficient) computing is theoretically possible.
- adrian_b 8mo agoReversible computing is not infinitely efficient, because irreversible operations, e.g. memory erasing, cannot be completely avoided. However, the computing efficiency could be greatly increased by employing reversible operations whenever possible and there are chances that this will be done in the future, but the efficiency will remain far from infinite.
- UltraSane 8mo agoIf you have a black hole as an infinite heat sink this helps a great deal.
- 8mo ago
- Sharlin 8mo agoIf protons decay. There isn't really any reason to believe they're not stable.
- hnuser123456 8mo agoAnd recent DESI data suggests that dark energy is not constant and the universe will experience a big crunch in a little more than double its current age, for a total lifespan of 33 billion years, no need to get wild with the orders of magnitude on years into the future. The infinite expansion to heat death over 10^100 years is looking less likely, 10^11 years should be plenty. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/02/260215225537.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/02/260215225537.h...
- disconcision 8mo agonot obvious to me this makes things better as opposed to worse? sure, the time bound helps but in the runup to a crunch won't we get vastly more devices in causal range at an asymptotically increasing rate?
- Towaway69 8mo agoWho’s there doing the counting? I would assume the temperatures at those extremes won’t support life in its known forms. Perhaps some Adamesque (as in douglas adams) creature whose sole purpose is to collect all unique UUIDs and give them names.
- throwaway290 8mo agoRunup to the crunch is a looong time lots of which is probably very habitable. in 5 billion years life can arise from scratch become conscious and exterminate itself
- frikit 8mo agoProtons can decay because the distinction between matter and energy isn't permanent. Two quarks inside the proton interact via a massive messenger particle. This exchange flips their identity, turning the proton into a positron and a neutral pion. The pion then immediately converts into gamma rays. Proton decayed!
- dheera 8mo agoProtons (and mass and energy) could also potentially be created. If this happens, the heat death could be avoided. Conservation of mass and energy is an empirical observation, there is no theoretical basis for it. We just don't know any process we can implement that violates it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
- dinosaurdynasty 8mo agoConservation laws result from continuous symmetries in the laws of physics, as proven by Noether's theorem.
- dheera 8mo agoTime translation symmetry implies energy conservation, but time translation symmetry is only an empirical observation on a local scale and has not been shown to be true on a global universe scale.
- adrianN 8mo agoAll of physics is „just“ based on empirical observation. It’s still a pretty good tool for prediction.