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The Death of A Universe
ninthwave writes "The Guardian is running an article on research into the visible effects of entropy in the Universe. Alan Heavens of The University of Edinburgh did the research also posted at The Royal Astronomical Society with this article" I dunno - expansion, heat death - it all reminds me of a teacher who said "I'm not a premillenialist, postmillenialist - I'm a pan-millenialist, as in it's all going to pan out in the end." Update: 08/18 16:36 GMT by S : Headline fixed.
By the time any of the effects of this are seen, the human race will have wiped itself out anyway. I wouldn't give us more than another few thousand years, much less billions.
In the future, all spacecraft will be made of cheese.
The universe has been around for billions of years and extends across unimaginably vast distances and yet pathetic little man with a lifespan like an eyeblink thinks he can offer insight as to its nature or its ability (or lack thereof) to sustain itself? Ha! The arrogance! Not even beginning to scratch the surface! How long has it been since man has so much as discovered the existance of galaxies? Less than 100 years? Soooo Johnny-come lately, do tell about the "nature of the universe"! Humans should learn to shut up and simply observe and not make grandiose statements about how things are as they are in no position to do so.
You're using her as bait, Master!
"We live in an accelerating universe now and so, as time goes on, the density of galaxies is going to thin out"
In my understanding the lights would be observed to go out for two reasons:
First, young stars form at vertices of intersecting matter bubbles and sheaths, where the concentration is highest. If a vertex reaches a high enough density it coalesces, gets critically hot so fusion can start. Problem is the average density of vertices is dropping, so less will go critical.
Second, cosmic expansion will make it increasingly less likely that the average new stars' light will be able to ever reach an observer.
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
> The people who spell it "an historic" aren't
> pronouncing the "h".
But they are, and do! That's what's so silly about it. It seems to be a fashion amongst meeja types in particular to say, "an" before any word beginning with h, regardless of how it's pronounced.
For a word like "honour" (or "honor" for left-ponders), practically no-one pronounces the h so "an honour" is perfectly sensible.
For the word "hotel", there is a school of thought which pronounces it the French way, without the h and so for them, "an hotel" is perfectly sensible.
If you happen to come from the north of England and call a four legged creature like an outsize pony an "'orse" then saying "an 'orse" is perfectly sensible.
What's just plain dumb (and, if you accept any rules at all in language, just plain wrong) is twisting your tongue to use the indefinite article "an" in front of a word where you also pronounce the leading h - I've heard "an historic", "an horse", "an house" and lots of others, all with the h clearly pronounced.
> I say it and spell it the way
> you do, but AFAIK they're both valid
> pronounciations.
Indeed, this isn't an argument about pronounciation. If you don't pronounce the h then "an" is the sensible one to use; if you do pronounce the h then "an" is just silly.
John
If we pronounced it correctly, we would speak Latin. If we spoke Latin, we would not use articles.
That God for government funded studies. I wouldn't have been able to make plans for 5.7 billion years from now had they not stole my wages to do such important work!
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
No, it's called a mistake, because the language doesn't dictate it, a semi-literate "editor" does, who remembers half the rule he learnt in primary school. It's the mindless extension of a rule, like putting an apostrophe before every final "s" when it's neither a possessive nor a contraction.
No, because theoretically there can be multiple universes.
If there is another universe, which is in any way connected with our universe, I don't think you could really call it a different universe. It is just a part of our universe which has not been discovered yet.
If OTOH you think about a different universe in no way connected to our universe, they can not ever affect each other. In that case that different universe does not exist. At least it does not exist using physicist's definition of existence. It might exist using a mathematician's definition of existence. However in math any consistent universe you can think of exists, which doesn't make much sense either. So either we have to stick to the exists in our universe meaning of existence, or we would have a lot of trouble defining existence.
In short there can be only one universe, because any other universe would be a part of ours or nonexistent.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?