5 ms·

Now I'm sad

• VanillaCafe 12y ago
  On the bright side, we'll probably never explore much of our galaxy, let alone the universe at large.
  • sigterm 12y ago
    that just makes it worse...
    • platz 12y ago
      This might help http://www.thrivenotes.com/the-last-question/ http://www.thrivenotes.com/the-last-question/
  • spullara 12y ago
    I'm pretty convinced we will either die out or fill the galaxy with people. If we can start the reaction by going one other place and inhabiting it I think it will ultimately set off a chain reaction. Lots of work to do between now and then but it seems like its mostly engineering now vs new discoveries.
    • hueving 12y ago
      > Lots of work to do between now and then but it seems like its mostly engineering now vs new discoveries. I'm not sure what you mean by this. There are still lots of issues with just surviving the journey, let alone making a foreign planet habitable and establishing a society. We need lots more discoveries in energy and understanding human physiology before it becomes just an engineering problem.
• sprash 12y ago
  Don't worry, we will collide with Andromeda before our Sun will die. So at least one other Galaxy can be "explored".
  • noselasd 12y ago
    Or really, any of the about 50 galaxies in our local group. If we could travel at light speed that is, which we can't and likely never will.
• 0xeeeeeeee 12y ago
  I always get half-sad half-glad when I read these types of things. Glad that I won't have to see this depressing end to the universe but still sad for humanity, that we won't last forever.
  • maaku 12y ago
    I don't know about you but I plan on lasting forever.
    • db48x 12y ago
      But barring that, I'd settle for a couple thousand years.
    • seszett 12y ago
      Same for me, I hope I am among the 6.5% of humans who don't die[0]! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Number_of_humans_who_have_ever_lived https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Number_of_hum...
• nerfhammer 12y ago
  Over the billions of years this will take humanity's descendants will probably figure out how to create whatever universes they want
• twic 12y ago
  Beyond the reachability limit, there's something even sadder, but possibly even more poetic: the comoving future visibility limit. That's the surface beyond which, although matter may exist, light from it will never reach us. In terms of time, it's very, very early - before the luminous phase of the big bang which gives us the cosmic microwave background. It's the very last thing on the map of the universe: http://www.astro.princeton.edu/universe/ http://www.astro.princeton.edu/universe/
  • fhars 12y ago
    There is actually a whole sequence of such limits: the visibility limit (where light emitted in the distant past reaches us now) is furthest out, then comes the reachability limit (where light emitted by us now can still be observed), then the round trip limit where we can send a message now and recieve an answer (before we are beyond their reachability limit), then the limit where we can send a message, recieve an answer and then send a final goodbye, then the limit for two full exchanges, and so on... But at least one could do the respective trips to slightly closer galaxies within a lifetime: http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0509268.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0509268.pdf (published in Phys.Rev. D, http://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.72.107302 http://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.72.107... )