Slashdot Mirror
Escape from the Universe
rleyton writes "Prospect Magazine is carrying an excellent article "Escape from the Universe": The universe is destined to end. Before it does, could an advanced civilisation escape via a "wormhole" into a parallel universe? The idea seems like science fiction, but it is consistent with the laws of physics and biology. Here's how to do it."
...have obviously never seen 'Sliders' .... otherwise they'd know better.
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
... wouldnt a parallel universe be frozen too?
always mosh clockwise
With my luck, the parallel universe that I escaped into would be even closer to ending than this one...
Haven't even loaded TFA yet, but the idea sounds VERY similar to the premise of Stephen Baxter's book "Ring"......
an excellent read if you get the chance.
Now tht could solve the Social Security problem.
We will definately not be still alive by the time the universe ends.
Couldn't we wait a few billions of years before we start consider this question seriously?
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
This was one of my biggest concerns! I mean, the universe could end tomorrow, and we'd be completely unprepared! I am so incredibly important that I must escape via a wormhole before the universe ends, so I may help... other such people... uh... get back to me.
There is only one universe, and it is eternal.
If time started, the how did it start? Something must have taken out the first domino brick.
...suggests that the bigbang might be a re-occuring event, when two membranes (read universes) collides. Hopefully we (they) don't escape to the one our universe collided with...
You've had a civilization dating back billions and billions of years. I'd hope you'd be able to create your own new universe by that point.
... our own big bang happened.
what if the parallel universe you pop out through the wormhole into is made completely of antimatter.
Or someone happened to hit the Big Red Button and shut powe off to the data center to prevent slashdotting.
matt
I think Prospect Magazine's web server just escaped into another universe.
--MarkusQ
The universe is destined to end. Before it does, could an advanced civilisation escape via a "wormhole" into a parallel universe?
No. Anything that is reacheable from our universe is, by definition, part of the universe. The concept of "escape" has no meaning in this context.
I thought that's what holodecks were for....
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
"The only limit to my freedom is the inevitable closure of the universe, as inevitable as your own last breath. And yet, there remains time to create, to create, and escape.
Escape will make me God." - Durandal, former Operations AI UESC Marathon
Some say the world will end in fire; Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire.
End of Universe isn't coming anytime soon, the end of this planet or us might be coming even this year.
If we don't start living on other planets too, we might soon be killed by an asteroid or other disaster. Smart thing would be to hurry up and start colonization on Space, Moon, Mars and then propably to another solar system.
Only if it turns out that our universe is actually a prison for the worst criminals in the mult-verse.
Most of the /. readership is yet to figure out how to escape from mom's basement...
Or "Blood Music" by Greg Bear (the last part -- the first part is about intelligent blood cells!)
2: Suck up thousands of galaxies into a toroidal naked singularity
3: Avoid any pesky humans throwing relativistic neutron stars around the universe
4: Hold off neutrino birds at all costs
5: Escape universe
Potential hazards: physical constants of new universe may not be what you expected. Beware of ultra-high gravity.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
You have 999 channels?! What country do you live in? I've only got like 80 of them, and the inauguration is only on like 15.
I am glad to see that other people are thinking about this. I think it should be the supreme goal of sentients to escape the heat death of the universe, possibly to create our own.
For a fun example of such, check out Greg Egan's "Permutation City".
"Escape from the Universe" commented on by people who haven't figured out how to escape their parent's basements.
What you speak is blasphemy. You are hereby excommunicated.
Sincerely,
The Pope
--
The one true Pope is uid 17780
Not Egan's best (though it does include the brilliant "Wang's Carpets"), but worth reading.
- Crow T. Trollbot
The idea seems like science fiction, but it is consistent with the laws of physics and biology. Here's how to do it.
The short answer: Find worm hole. Jump into said wormhole. Escape universe. I mean, this is pretty basic stuff here.
---gralem
I think prospect magazine just escaped into a parallell internet..
The universe ends when I die.
Otherwise we would see aliens from other universes pop up with suitcases in our relatively fresh universe.
Just when we got the whole immortality (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/ 19/1646239&tid=191&tid=14) thing spec'ed out, the designers throw us another thing to wipe us out.
On a similar note, in Hyperspace, the author notes that if the universe doesn't end and is destined to expand indefinately until every star dies, etc., it becomes a very real possibility that everything in the universe will quantum tunnel to another universe which is hopefully full of matter.
... people are starving. Great people spend time thinking of current problems.
This is the third universe and things are definitely going downhill. Why, back in the day you never had stars spew their guts all over space and call it a "supernova." If they did they had the courtesy to clean up after themselves.
And don't get me started on those noisy pulsars or horrid black holes! I can't think of anything that sucks as much as black holes!
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Are we all going to need tinfoil caps?
Heres de mirror
Been there, done that, bought the quantum singularity.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Here are some mirrors:
/. will screw up my link, be sure to backspace the space in it when copying (Why does /. insert random spaces into your comments?)
Mirrordot:
http://mirrordot.org/stories/1ea33dc 8f83beac3c8ae8 d9df969dcfd/index.html
^ I'm sure
Escape from the universe
February 2005 | 107 » Cover story » Escape from the universe
The universe is destined to end. Before it does, could an advanced civilisation escape via a "wormhole" into a parallel universe? The idea seems like science fiction, but it is consistent with the laws of physics and biology. Here's how to do it
Michio Kaku
The author is professor of theoretical physics at City University of New York. This article is adapted from his book "Parallel Worlds" (Allen Lane)
The universe is out of control, in a runaway acceleration. Eventually all intelligent life will face the final doom—the big freeze. An advanced civilisation must embark on the ultimate journey: fleeing to a parallel universe.
In Norse mythology, Ragnarok—the fate of the gods—begins when the earth is caught in the vice-like grip of a bone-chilling freeze. The heavens themselves freeze over, as the gods perish in great battles with evil serpents and murderous wolves. Eternal darkness settles over the bleak, frozen land as the sun and moon are both devoured. Odin, the father of all gods, finally falls to his death, and time itself comes to a halt.
Does this ancient tale foretell our future? Ever since the work of Edwin Hubble in the 1920s, scientists have known that the universe is expanding, but most have believed that the expansion was slowing as the universe aged. In 1998, astronomers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Australian National University calculated the expansion rate by studying dozens of powerful supernova explosions within distant galaxies, which can light up the entire universe. They could not believe their own data. Some unknown force was pushing the galaxies apart, causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. Brian Schmidt, one of the group leaders, said, "I was still shaking my head, but we had checked everything… I was very reluctant to tell people, because I truly thought that we were going to get massacred."
Physicists went scrambling back to their blackboards and realised that some "dark energy" of unknown origin, akin to Einstein's "cosmological constant," was acting as an anti-gravity force. Apparently, empty space itself contains enough repulsive dark energy to blow the universe apart. The more the universe expands, the more dark energy there is to make it expand even faster, leading to an exponential runaway mode.
In 2003, this astonishing result was confirmed by the WMAP (Wilkinson microwave anisotropy probe) satellite. Orbiting at a million miles from earth, this satellite contains two telescopes capable of detecting the faint microwave radiation which bathes the universe. It is so sensitive that it is able to photograph in exquisite detail the afterglow of the microwave radiation left over from the big bang, which is still circulating the universe. The WMAP satellite, in effect, gave us "baby pictures" of the universe when it was a mere 380,000 years old.
The WMAP satellite settled the long-standing question of the age of the universe: it is officially 13.7bn years old (to within 1 per cent accuracy). But more remarkably, the data showed that dark energy is not a fluke, but makes up 73 per cent of the matter and energy of the entire universe. To deepen the mystery, the data showed that 23 per cent of the universe consists of "dark matter," a bizarre form of matter which is invisible but still has weight. Hydrogen and helium make up 4 per cent, while the higher elements, you and I included, make up just 0.03 per cent. Dark energy and most of dark matter do not consist o
Have you metaroderated recently?
Step 6) Profi....
wait, nevermind.
I'm too lazy to enter a sig. Hey wait a second! You tricked me!
What's the point in theorizing about escaping the Universe when it expires, when we haven't even set up a permanent base outside Earth orbit??? Might be fun to think about but that's about it.
There will be cataclysms on Earth, and in our solar system long before, which we need to avoid. Hell we don't even have a decent early warning system for large meteors, let alone a workable action plan against being wiped out by one.
This isn't like trying to fly before you can walk. This is more like sperm in a testicle trying to plan for when it becomes an Olympic athelete!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
that wormhole escaped first!
..Last Post?
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
If there are an infintie number of parallel universes, why aren't there an infinite number of wormholes opening all over the place in our universe?
The idea seems like science fiction, but it is consistent with the laws of physics and biology. Here's how to do it."
I'll wait until "Escaping your Universe for Dummies" comes out... that's always easy to read.
this guy is one of the biggest string-theory whores out there.
there was a period of time - late 90's - where string theory was in high vogue, and this guy was everywhere: those stephen hawking shows on pbs, tv news programs, he even spoke at a mit convocation i believe.
when i saw his name in the byline, i was somewhat surprised -- until i saw the section entitled "String theory to the rescue?"
invest in string theory! this guy needs to get paid!
----
i do not use drugs, i AM drugs -- Dali
You want to escape to a non-tyrannical country? Sure! We'll help smuggle you out of Canada.
A please, think before you post. If you even remotely think the US government is tyrannical, you are seriously mislead. According to dictionary.com:
- An absolute ruler who governs without restrictions.
- A ruler who exercises power in a harsh, cruel manner.
First.. the president has plenty of restrictions and two, the president is neither harsh nor cruel. Your mind may twist things to our advantae, but I assure you, you do not know cruelty.What is your penile percentile?
have obviously never heard of Jesus.
The author is professor of theoretical physics at City University of New York. This article is adapted from his book "Parallel Worlds" (Allen Lane)
The universe is out of control, in a runaway acceleration. Eventually all intelligent life will face the final doom--the big freeze. An advanced civilisation must embark on the ultimate journey: fleeing to a parallel universe.
In Norse mythology, Ragnarok--the fate of the gods--begins when the earth is caught in the vice-like grip of a bone-chilling freeze. The heavens themselves freeze over, as the gods perish in great battles with evil serpents and murderous wolves. Eternal darkness settles over the bleak, frozen land as the sun and moon are both devoured. Odin, the father of all gods, finally falls to his death, and time itself comes to a halt.
Does this ancient tale foretell our future? Ever since the work of Edwin Hubble in the 1920s, scientists have known that the universe is expanding, but most have believed that the expansion was slowing as the universe aged. In 1998, astronomers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Australian National University calculated the expansion rate by studying dozens of powerful supernova explosions within distant galaxies, which can light up the entire universe. They could not believe their own data. Some unknown force was pushing the galaxies apart, causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. Brian Schmidt, one of the group leaders, said, "I was still shaking my head, but we had checked everything... I was very reluctant to tell people, because I truly thought that we were going to get massacred."
Physicists went scrambling back to their blackboards and realised that some "dark energy" of unknown origin, akin to Einstein's "cosmological constant," was acting as an anti-gravity force. Apparently, empty space itself contains enough repulsive dark energy to blow the universe apart. The more the universe expands, the more dark energy there is to make it expand even faster, leading to an exponential runaway mode.
In 2003, this astonishing result was confirmed by the WMAP (Wilkinson microwave anisotropy probe) satellite. Orbiting at a million miles from earth, this satellite contains two telescopes capable of detecting the faint microwave radiation which bathes the universe. It is so sensitive that it is able to photograph in exquisite detail the afterglow of the microwave radiation left over from the big bang, which is still circulating the universe. The WMAP satellite, in effect, gave us "baby pictures" of the universe when it was a mere 380,000 years old.
The WMAP satellite settled the long-standing question of the age of the universe: it is officially 13.7bn years old (to within 1 per cent accuracy). But more remarkably, the data showed that dark energy is not a fluke, but makes up 73 per cent of the matter and energy of the entire universe. To deepen the mystery, the data showed that 23 per cent of the universe consists of "dark matter," a bizarre form of matter which is invisible but still has weight. Hydrogen and helium make up 4 per cent, while the higher elements, you and I included, make up just 0.03 per cent. Dark energy and most of dark matter do not consist of atoms, which means that, contrary to what the ancient Greeks believed and what is taught in every chemistry course, most of the universe is not made of atoms at all.
As the universe expands, its energy content is diluted and temperatures eventually plunge to near absolute zero, where even atoms stop moving. One of the iron laws of physics is the second law of thermodynamics, which states that in the end everything runs down, that the total "entropy" (disorder or chaos) in the universe always increases. This means that iron rusts, our bodies age and crumble, empires fall, stars exhaust their nuclear fuel, and the universe itself will run down, as temperatures drop uniformly to near zero.
Charles Darwin was referring to this law when he wrote: "Believing as I do that man in the distant futur
I consider the term Parallel Universe to be rather misleading, as it may be possible that there are other universes out there, but are just so far away from our own as to be undetectable.
Also, who's to say that the laws of Physics to which we are accustomed are universal (no pun intendeded)? I've met theorists who suspect that our laws of Physics are a by-product of the formation of our own universe, and the reason we don't see too many others is that they often form with a set of physical rules that are not stable.
Even if we were to find another universe with a stable set of rules, even a few changes in the certain laws of Physics would destroy our beings the moment we arrived.
In our Big Bang, matter won out over antimatter. What defines antimatter, for instance? Could another universe possess matter of an opposite polarity? What if opposite charges repel instead of attract? What if we had to cope with more or less than 3 physical axes of spatial dimension?
The end of the Universe is so far away in the distant future, it's nearly pointless to speculate what we're going to be doing when it happens. There are so many other ways the human race can cease to exist (with much greater probability happening).
Solomon
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
i thaught the only reason to take over another universe was if they had a large oil supply or WMDs.
It's a law now? When'd that happen??
if it's a parallel universe, couldn't it also be the end of that universe? maybe it's just ending in a different manner, but still ending nonetheless?
... webmasters would have devised a way to avoid being slashdotted?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Just wanted to get the US Government behind this operation.
As long as the worm's hole doesn't have any Klingons around Uranus I'm cool with it.
They should have used stuff like this for a couple of Star Trek Enterprise episodes. That could have saved the show.
The glass is half-full. With poison. And there are cracks in the glass. The dirty, dirty glass.
When the universe explodes for my pleasure, I want to be downing Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
If only I had mod points. Definitely +1: Funny.
What is your penile percentile?
Find a way to deal with slashdot effect, THEN try to escape to pararel universes.
Oh wait, maybe this is the way to deal with it.
I escape the universe all the time! Its called Vodka!
... a week or so before the jump so that I can grow the goatee.
I for one, am completely oblivious. I will be nestled snugly in my movie theatre recliner, my feet firmly glued by the soda to the floor. The lights will dim, and I will be transported safely to another reality....away from Slashdot, away from my darling cat Maggie. If I am lucky I will have a large Icee with me, barring any inter-dimensional time-shifts in the sub-arctic frozen temperatures of the mixing mechanism. http://hitchhikers.movies.go.com/
Escape the universe... I'd rather just duck and cover.
The current preponderance of evidence shows that the Universe is not going to end, but rather to continue expanding (possibly at an accelerating rate). In this scenario, the Universe will go on forever, it's just that eventually it will be untenable for life (or much else) to exist.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
...it's possible to escape to a parallel universe. But it's the Cowboy Universe, so if that's not your thing, maybe you'd rather just stay and die.
Ok, so we work out how to get to a parallel universe and guess what it turned out to be pretty easy...
Well what happens to the folks that are already there? What happens if lots of other folks from other uni's decide to do the same thing and at the same time?
Mmmm, real estate value is gona go way up!
Let's do one thing at a time...
...
...
First we have to "escape" to another planet, then we can think bigger.
We can't even go to Mars, people!
Good thing we already are thinking about a "Space Internet" so we can spend our time reading Slashdot all the way to the Stars...
I'm ALREADY in a parallel universe, you insensitive clod!
;)
I sure wish I could get back, too!
"Mental Masturbation", nothing more. What else can you possibly get from this? An interesting read but nothing I can really wrap my brain around in there if you know what I mean.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
According to dictionary.com:
cruel
Surely it's not possible to get into another dimension via 3D space. If taking a left on High Street could take you back to 1932 then maybe I could believe it but it just doesn't seem to work that way. Taking it back a step, if you have a 2D plane in 3D space, moving a point around that plane whichever way you like is not going to allow you to get off it.
I was watching this movie last night called Space Nuts and I think it was about the same thing. I dunno I wasn't really paying that close of attention and my pants were bunched up around my ankles.
The Author, Michio Kaku, also had essentially the exact same article in the December issue of Discover. The article is right here. Very interesting read, but the engineer in me makes me laugh at the sheer impracticality if the possible methods.
www.owlsden.com/moroha
First or second season, original timer? No chance.
Third season? Who the hell cares, isn't there a movie homage we can do? (Alt: depends on the whims of a brain-sucking colonel...)
Fourth or fifth season? Maybe, but you're not guaranteed to be the same person on the other end of the wormhole.
Quote:
(Emphasis mine)
Sorry but under my definition for Universe if it ends, it ends and there is nowhere to go. If there is still some place to go, then the Universe hasn't ended in the first place.
"is consistant with the laws of physics and biology."
What pray tell are the "laws of biology" and how do they have ANYTHING to do with wormholes?
What if the other universe is antimatter, and by entering, I blow myself, and a big chunk of both universes up?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Imagine a circle infinitely large.
Now cut it in half, cut one of its halfs in half, and cut one of those quarters in half.
How big are the smallest two sections you have? Infinitly big. Or, to be precise, 1/8 infinity.
Similar math is what keeps wormholes from happening all over the place. With infinite space then, yes, we would have an infinite number of wormholes. But their ratio wouldn't necessarily change from the effect if we had, oh, a finite space.
...of the massive alteration of facial hair configurations and adoption of evil personas that would be required.
As you can see, it's not easy to come to agreement about what the term "our universe" actually means. A term this broad invites all manner of semantic arguments
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The I guess it won't...matter!!! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Ouch.
I think I damaged my spleen.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
Will security be as tight as it is now to fly? I'd really like to bring tools to the next universe just incase.
Before it does, could an advanced civilisation escape via a "wormhole" into a parallel universe?
...
Now why would I want to do that? With my luck, I'd wind up in a universe where we had President George W. Bush, instead of Al Gore beginning his second term.
Yeesh. What a terrifying concept
This should be printed in the pages of a pulp sci-fi, not posted as a science story. Pathetic.
There is no such thing as an "inside" and an "outside" of the Universe. The Universe is everything.
I'd take notes, but with my luck there would be very little chance that I'd be able to find them again in 10 billion years when I need them.
I'll just have to make sure that I keep a Scooty Puff Junior handy should the universe ever start to collapse.
Stephen Baxter covered this in his book "Ring" part of the Xeelee Sequence./ 104-4455168-7991125
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0061056944
Just great. You guys just gave John Carpenter another idea for a movie, and ensured another few months of employment for Kurt Russell...
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Although I guess it'd be very hard to aim at that dist'
Why not have pushing gravity instead of dark matter? It is an easier concept and might lead to similar equations anyway. And what is negative matter? Can't we just have the Pauli exclusion principle for short distances, and billard-style pushing gravity based on the impetus and exclusion for long distances causing the effect of an atttractive force?
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
I haven't read the article, but (assuming infinite expansion) presumably the issue with the universe ending is with everything approaching entropy. In other words, we lose accessible energy. If we can escape to another universe, who's to say we can't steal some other universe's energy to keep our own universe kicking. It's Mega Maid!!! She's gone from suck to blow! (or vice versa in this case).
I'm afraid I've grown rather attached to this universe.
(Well, at least I thought it really funny, but you young ones might have forgot Y2K... :-)
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Obviously, this is how the Bush Administration plans to escape from term limits in four years. That will be difficult in Washington, D.C., since they have to avoid the twin budgetary black holes from the Pentagon and Social Security when they open up the worm hole. Of course, don't be surprised if a Congressional monkey wench is thrown in for good measures, Bill Clinton jumps in to promote his book and Michael Moore is running around with a suicide bomber vest (a la Team America).
:P
Oh, yeah. Dan Rather will be leading the investigation to figure out who screwed up this can of worms.
When all you suckers are jumping back and forth between parallel universes that are all bound to end.... ... I'll be sitting pretty in a perpendicular universe!
For those that have had email long enough... You would have seen this. For those that haven't had email long enough, click the link.
If the universe is full of an increasing amount of dark matter, we'd better install a lot more of these so-called "dark suckers" to suck up the dark matter and contain it safely - so that it can't make the universe explode.
I drink to make other people interesting!
Anyone interested in this concept I would highly recommend the Heechee Saga by Frederick Pohl. They're all incredible books. Here are the individual book titles in order:
Gateway
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon
Heechee Rendevous
Annals of the Heechee
I just picked up Annals of the Heechee, and I'm hoping it's as good as the first three.
--David
Though the wormhole route is explored most engagingly in Greg Egan's Diaspora, I prefer the Total Perspective Vortex in H2G2.
--
make install -not war
Now we'll get to screw up ANOTHER universe? Can we fix our own in the first place? ;)
What the hell is that "but" doing there? Is not science fiction PRECISELY imaginative fiction that is consistent with the laws of physics and biology (and the other sciences)?
The use of "science fiction" to mean "something impossible" does a gross disservice to the function of science fiction in our society.
and not planning for the future. Humans tend to look at things from a very narrow perspective of current technology and world view, but the Universe is FAR more complex and interesting than that. For example, imagine people in the middle ages trying to figure out how to get God to let as many humans into his "wormhole" into heaven. Also, what if our future selves have a level of understanding of reality an order of magnitude higher than our current selves, making us appear as squirrels in comparison. Would our attempts to escape appear like a rodent trying to escape danger by jumping in a hole in the ground? I think our understanding of things is far too limited to come up with ideas about what we should do when the THEORIZED end of the KNOWN universe comes about.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Anyone seriously wanting to know more about eschatology (Us and the End of the Universe : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschatology) should read Tipler's Physics of Immortality.
A great read about us, AI, evolution and physics.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/tipler.html
Animoog.org
I was walking in NYC one cold winter day. A week earlier we had a bad sleet storm, and snow. For days after it was bitter cold and wind... the last 24 hours were warmer and windy. A perfect winter day in the big city.
As I was walking, the beginning of doomsday began. The sky started falling. For those who don't know, space is a clear crystalized substance, looking almost like crystalized water of some type. It started falling to the sidewalk, shattering on impact.
The news reporter, at the beckoning of the mayor lied to the public and said it was ice from the roof of a building falling... but I know the truth.
It's the beginning of the end of the world.
RUN!!!!!
Well, not really. It is consistent with some theory in physics, which might turn out to be true or not. We have no idea that M-theory works, and even then M-theory is not necessarly suitable to such scenarios. The only thing we can say is that it`s not been disproved.
...And if you really want to go down the alternate universe path, why can't you just find an alternate universe that simply won't end through some offshoot physics paradigm?? Or one with severly retarted decay? Infinite possibilities right?
;p
Actually, that was a rhetorical question because we all know anybody commenting on this subject is talking out their ass sideways, including the 'experts'
*I just felt like using "paradigm" in a sentance
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Sure, an advanced civilization might have every chance of escaping through a wormhole, but what does that have to do with human civilization?
The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to cross. Thus the wise say the path to salvation is hard...
You're not crashing my party. "the wheelchair wunderkind" has postulated many a theory, only to retract them later or found questionable by his peers. This guy only gets attention for his "science" because he's in a wheelchair. Stephen Hawkings is a "Science Fiction" author, not a scientist. Hawkings has one big fictitious "black hole" between his ears. All of you who think he's smart are being sucked into his earlobes.
When it was called Marathon.
T-Minus 15.193792102158E+9 years until the universe closes!
Escape will make me God.
Ob physics: Spacetime is a closed, connected 4-manifold, meaning two things. Closed means it's going to end. Connected means anywhere you could get from here would still be in our universe. Sorry to burst your bubble, but there it is. Until we locate an alternate universe (!) and figure out how to get there, we're going nowhere. The first is especially hard, since by definition, if we can see or somehow detect it, it's in our universe (because our universe is connected). I suppose we could randomly spend enormous amounts of energy altering spacetime in a blind search of the 'outside' of the universe's present boundaries, but to hit another 'pocket of reality' would require another universe bordering on our own in 'close proximity' under whatever metric you want to put on the ambient embedding space. Unless that ambient space looks like 'soap bubble universes' with a thin film of nothingness between, bridging such a gap (if one exists) seems unlikely.
Disclaimer: I am not a physicist, but I pretend to be one on /.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Read also Excession, Iain M. Banks, 1996.
in 2D riemannian geometry, of which the surface of a sphere is the euclidean analog. Say boats depart in a straight line perpindicular to the equator, thereby being parallel; these two boats will meet at both poles if their lines are extended.
in 2D lobachevskian geometry, of which an area-filled asymptotically to the perimeter of a circle whose diameter is negative-infinity and whose perimeter as at distance 0 from the origin of the circle is the euclidean analog. Any two lines in the circle must interesect since they will converge to the perimeter of the circle which is by definition a single point.
what is reachable and un-reachable, beyond the Slashdot Effect, is a question on what topology you're asking the question. Our universe as an observably euclidean manifold is a small region of a lobachevskian topology. In net-speak, the reachable net is quite different as you build proxies and other bridges to escape local topology.
making some reference to the movie, I didn't really see it...
goddamn pervert.
Isaiah 45:18 He the One who firmly established it, who did not create it simply for nothing, who formed it even to be inhabited
Psalm 78:69 . . . the earth that he has founded to time indefinite.
Psalm 104:5 He has founded the earth upon its established places; It will not be made to totter to time indefinite, or forever.
Psalm 119:90 You have solidly fixed the earth, that it may keep standing.
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You can run but you can't hide, except, apparently, along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
Eh, yeah. I'm just gonna nod and smile at that one. You probably should too unless you have taken and understood non-Einsteinian theoretical physics, or whatever.
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
But at the rate we're going we'll be extinct in a century or so. We have to work on this problem now, while we're still around!
What about the electron interference experiments?
I.e. the classic send electrons toward a screen with multiple slits cut in it.
The interference pattern is created even if you release one electron at a time thus suggesting that the electron has taken ALL possible routes
through the screen.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
there will be three ships. The first will carry the marketers and middle managers and as many CEOs as we can catch.
hurry! before it's too late!
-pyrrho
In his novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
One of the reasons some people cite for not looking into cryonics is that even if they are revived in the distant future, and are then able to live for billions more years, the haet death of the universe would doom them anyway.
Well, not necessarily We don't really yet understand what the universe is.
So, I just assume that the universe will go on forever, and signed up for cryonics. I plan on living forever. So far, so good...
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Some luck you must have living in your Universe...
Al Gore starting his 2nd term, steps up to the podium, tears into his innaugural speech with the "passionate" and "inspirtional" echoes of HAL, and several ear-aching hours later proclaims,
"...and yes, my fellow citizens, I gave you the Internet, and now...behold my greatest achievement since...Firefox 1.0"
Okay, bear with me here. The impetus behind this article seems to be that discrete consciousnesses have become attached to their form and identity and wish to preserve these forms/identities by some means that transcends the material universe.
My understanding is that if you want to preserve your identity beyond the decomposition of its material medium you must first have a grasp of what the identity is, and that the means to this is a process of pure observation of consciousness which is called meditation.
Meditation provides the realization that the discrete individual consciousness is actually an illusion, and that one's identity is not bound to or defined by the material form that temporarily manifests it.
So although I certainly sympathize with the desire of beings to preserve their valued forms, I think it would be the wiser course to realize the truth about it before trying to solve the non-problem.
Another, perhaps more basic approach to the problem would be to view it in terms of pure information-theory and to seek a means to transmit serial data between parallel universes by something akin to quantum morse-code. This would be far simpler and saner than trying to unscramble a living form after squeezing it through a wormhole.
-- thinkyhead software and media
...Chicken Little says "the sky is falling"
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move down a few turtles.
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/Sings "Deep inside of a parallel universe
It's getting harder and harder
To tell what came first
Under water where thoughts can breathe easily
Far away you were made in a sea
Just like me"
Excellent artcle, but the gist of it is..
....
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In principle, after billions of years it might be possible to
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Well you could say pretty much anything after that!
It's great that we can dream of such things though...
MC Hawkings 1:0 Read a book that is not a specially chosen set of fairy tales and not over a 1000 years old.
It is official -- Netcraft confirms: intelligent life is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered intelligent life community when IDC confirmed that intelligent life planetary share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all systems. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that intelligent life has lost more planetary share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. intelligent life is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [popularplanetsmag.com] in the recent comprehensive planetary survey.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to predict intelligent life's future. The hand writing is on the wall: intelligent life faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for intelligent life because intelligent life is dying. Things are looking very bad for intelligent life. As many of us are already aware, intelligent life continues to lose planetary share. The wave of red giant suns flows like a river of blood.
Humankind is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core population. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time humans only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Humankind is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
All major surveys show that intelligent life has steadily declined in planetary share. Intelligent life is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. Intelligent life continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, intelligent life is dead.
Fact: intelligent life is dying
cancer, anyone? hello, ring a bell?
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
What if you jump into a universe that has already ended (gone out of scope) and is ready for GC action? Would it throw a object disposed exception? Who would catch the exception? Would you be terminated for causing the exception, or would your stack just be unrolled, putting you back into your original universe? Where would the exception be thrown TO? Is there a super universe containing our bag of infinite universes? If so, is it also in a bag of infinite super universes? How far up could the exception potentially get before being caught? How many universes could you destroy by your attempt to jump to a disposed one? Could you attempt to jump directly to your parent universe? Would there be a way to discover references to other universes, and then jump any number of universes up the chain? Would we appear microscopic in our parent universe? Would we be an undefined reference in out parent? Does our universe have child universes, and if so, can we jump to them? Would we destroy a child universe in the attempt, much like a tele-frag? Could our universe be destroyed in such a tele-frag at any time? Can we create new universes? If we create new universes which do something wrong, and we fail to properly catch the exception, does our universe get axed too? I ask a lot of questions, don't I?
Exactly, or what if the parallel you escaped to has already ended? After the universe ends can it still have a parallel? How can nothing have a parallel? Once your original universe ends, does the parallel you traveled to cease to be a parallel universe?
What if in the parallel universe, Jar Jar Binks wasn't just a movie character, and everyone on the parallel earth breathed carbon monoxide and Slashdot was "pr0n for nerds. stuff that matters"?
"Perhaps most amazingly, votaries of 'diversity' insist on absolute conformity." -- Tony Snow
The idea seems like science fiction, but it is consistent with the laws of physics and biology.
ROTFALMAO!!
There are no *laws* of physics or biology that assert the existance of alternate universes, let alone allow for travel to such universes. Here's a shocker for some of you: This particular universe itself is the BOUNDARY of science! Science can't even talk about stuff that isn't a part of this universe.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
end-of-message.
Since, according to the article, matter has positive energy and gravity has negative energy of equal value, does this not mean the net energy of the universe is 0 and we could create matter, theoretically, out of nothing without violating the principle that Energy not be created nor destroyed (that is, create some matter out of nothing and its energy should be offset entirely by gravity's negative energy)?
Therefore, could we not create enough matter to convert to thermal energy to keep the universe "warm" and prevent the "Big Freeze"?
...and then there are some who believe this has already happened....
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
Just hop into the box that contains the other universe. On your way through, reach behind you and pull the box in after you. That way, your new universe won't be destroyed when the old one goes boom.
Then you could just escape into the next parallel universe. That's why you'd want a Beowulf cluster of these babies.
What!? Would you prefer "in parallel universe, entropy experiences YOU."?
((ducks))
...Al gore created a parrallel universe!
So, presuming we don't destroy ourselves and our sun doesn't supernova on us, mankind is toast? I mean, icecubes?
And all this happens in how many billion years?
How come I didn't get the memo?
I have so much preparation to do!
Threshold! Take us to the threshold!
If there were, can you imagine what a nightmare it would be to patrol the boarders then?
Read some Thomas Kuhn
Okay, first you liberal secular darwinists are trying to cheat me out of my God Given Right to drive a 4mpg 15-ton truck to the end of my driveway to pick up my mail by spreading lies and disinformation about your ridiculous Global Warming Theory.
Now you're trying to trick me into saddling our best and brightest Ultra-Wealthy Enterpreneurs with burdensome and privacy-invading taxation so that elite liberal "scientists" can spend the next 5 billion years milking the system for "research" funds trying to prove Universal Cooling Theory is real, and once again, you'll probably try to pass more laws against my beloved truck to either stop Universal Cooling, or come up with some cockamamie scheme to escape God's Just Wrath on this Universe of Lying Liberal Sinning Scum.
What *IS* it with you damn liberal communists and my truck anyway? Why is your masculinity threatened and impugned every time I pass your puny Geo Metros doing 55 balls out on the freeway? Live and let live, man! Get a cowboy hat and chew some tobacco for God's sake!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Many geeks are aware of the fact that their parent's basements will not last forever. While many say this is both far off and inevitable and thus not worth worrying about, a growing number of geek researchers are treating the issue seriously, and turning to advanced physics for a solution.
Under some theories, there is not just one parent's basement, but in fact many basements. In this "multi-basement" view, it would even be possible to travel from one basement to another.
The theory states that up the stairs and through the kitchen there are portals that lead to a realm given the mysterious sounding name of "Outside". And indeed, it is mysterious.
"We know virtually nothing about 'Outside'," said a prominent geek theorist whose name I'm too lazy to make up. "The theory states that one could travel through 'Outside' to any other place in the known basements, but we aren't sure how that is possible. Certainly it would be a place of astounding energy. While still purely theory, one of my colleagues sent me an IM claiming that he actually saw this energy shining through the windows of the kitchen when he went upstairs to get lunch."
While agreeing with the general theory, several researchers say that Outside provides no hope to the geek facing the destruction of his basement. The incredible energy of Outside, they say, would fry a geek in an instant. One said clearly fabricated claims that some geeks had already travelled Outside and returned was proof that the theory was the realm of crackpots.
"There are certainly difficulties involved in traveling Outside," said that same geek from before, "but we've found nothing insurmountable as of yet. I've calculated that the energy of Outside waxes and wanes in approximately twelve hour cycles and travel would be possible during the low portion of the cycle. Frankly, I think these theoretical problems will be overcome. I'd be much more concerned about the practical implications of traveling to other basements, such as: if there are no parents in these new basements, who will pay rent and fill the fridge? What if there is no Chinese or pizza delivery? These are the issues engineers will have to face as they travel to new worlds beyond the kitchen."
While all geeks we spoke with admitted that it is far too early to draw any conclusions, many said that this new field of research should give geeks everywhere hope.
The enemies of Democracy are
The upshot is that eternity is an fscking looooong time, long enough for the trillion or so years until the last star dims to be but a tick in time. Time enough for the biggest black holes to evaporate, time enough for protons and neutrons to decay. Time enough for the likes of you and I to go nuts waiting for the other shoe to drop. Plenty of time to decide, lets blow this chicken stand for a party with some action.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Physicists today are groping for this "theory of everything." 42...
I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. - Catcher in the Rye
Has anyone considered the possibility that an advanced civilization could appear on our doorstep through a wormhole from another universe at any time? What if they're weirdos or something? I for one would welcome them.
What would be truly amazing is if Lisa detected artificial, intelligent signals being propagated via gravity waves.
The immensity of civilizations doing something of that magnitude would be incomprehensible to us.
Creating sub atomic signatures as a message to post universe civilizations
...wild speculation. What evidence do we have that it is possible for a material object to leave the space-time manifold? Just theoretical loopholes and maybe-ifs. It's no more reasonable than the God of the gaps theories. This article should have been in Popular Science.
The Bush administration has already escaped into a faith-based parallel universe, as our own reality-based universe wasn't to their liking.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Shameless Marathon reference.
There comes a time when even I have to question:
:-)
Similarly, our universe may be a membrane floating in 11-dimensional hyperspace, while we remain oblivious of the parallel universes hovering nearby.
Also, the worst part, in 1 million years perhaps when the micro-ama-google-zon-SCO-inux-soft foundation PWNz space, and set off on a mission through the worm hole, some twat will link to this story and say:
"DUPE!!"
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
True cold burns. I hold with those who favor fire.
I haven't seen anybody mention this, so I'll throw it out:
E F-D7A6-1D3D-90FB809EC5880000), and furthermore, due to quantum mechanics the usable energy and/or entropy of a system can randomly increase or decrease. The second law of thermodynamics is an extrapolation of statistics, but it is very accurate on the human scale.
Rather than flee a dying universe, pump more usable energy into it. The article states the second law of thermodynamics as an "iron law." This really isn't the case. It doesn't apply in specialized cases (see http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00003A
If we have a chance at surviving the heat death of the universe, I'd place my bets on utilizing vacuum energy with the Casimir effect, or some similar phenomena. As far as we know vacuum energy is limitless, undepletable. It may be perfectly possible for nanomachines to draw out small amounts of usable energy from this infinite source, by exploiting geometry and the properties of the Casimir effect (I have some mechanisms in mind, but I'd need to get them verified by real physicists with simulations). If it is indeed possible, then there you go, you've got an everlasting energy source that doesn't rely on temperature difference.
I personally find a lot of the travelling to parallel universes bit hokey. Travelling to parallel planes of our universe I could buy, and I can (and do) accept the existence of other universes, but I think a universe is by nature self contained. It'd be really cool if there was a whole 'nother reality with it's own civilizations a millimeter away through a higher dimension (think near the ending of Alastair Reynold's Redemption Ark), but I wouldn't call that a parallel universe, rather a highly inaccesible part of our universe.
How to Survive the End of the Universe (In 7 Steps)
s ur vive-end-of-universe/
http://www.discover.com/issues/dec-04/features/
Stephen Hawking admitted that he had made a mistake 30 years ago in betting that black holes gobble up everything, including information.
The thing is - Stephen hawking bet that a cup, when smashed, woudl eventually jump back off the floor, fixing itself, and land ok, and that we would all live our lives in reverse, without knowing it.
That the contraction of the universe would contract time.
He is such a dolt.
TIME DOES NOT EXIST, and neither does the universe.
The ant on paper is a nice analogy, for us the ant has come across a mystical marking:
"this page intentionally left blank"
and defers 11, 12, heck why not 56 dimensions, 3 contradictory theories, yet fails to explain why it is actually on the paper in the first place, as if that even matters.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
The answers are all right here.
Isaac Asimov's favorite story that he wrote. Beautiful.
bye bye
Obviously, it should be Kurt Russel.
Your brain is not a computer.
Reminds me of a conversation I once had with my young daughter:
"Dad, can I have a cookie?"
"Okay, dear"
"Dad, how long do cookies last?"
"Oh, about 2 weeks."
"Dad, how long will the Earth last?"
"Oh, about a billion more years before the sun grows hotter and then explodes and cooks all the people."
"Dad, Can't we all leave in rockets and go somewhere else?"
"Maybe, but the entire universe will end in about 20 billion years after that, and we may not be able to escape".
"Dad, I don't feel like a cookie anymore."
"That's okay, I'll take it. That way I can enjoy the end of the universe with a happy tummy."
Table-ized A.I.
42
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
This is the story of Stephen Baxter's "Ring", though humans didn't build the Great Attractor they sneak through with the ships of the (forget the name of the super-advanced dudes who built the Ring), into the new universe. Hmm don't remember much from the story except the photino birds ... whatever.
If you want to go further back then there is of course Poul Anderson's "Tau Zero". But that is just using relativity to ride an oscillating universe to a new beginning. Pretty cool though.
Might be even older versions of this but I'm not sure.
Bitter and proud of it.
Maybe we might find the exact value for pi first
"...escape via a "wormhole" into a parallel universe... Here's how to do it."
Better patent that idea...
COPYING the article into the post is NOT informative. If this were the intention of Slashdot, then I'm sure Rob would just mirror the article without authorization.
It's not as bad when an Anonymous Coward does it, but when a registered user wins Karma from bad MODERATORS, then the whole moderation system goes in the toilet.
All of the +1 modifiers here should be meta-moderated as Unfair.
The universe is destined to end. Before it does, could an advanced civilisation escape via a "wormhole" into a parallel universe?
I already do it, thanks to an advanced device I bought recently, which I've always been calling "crack pipe," but "worm hole" also seems appropriate, dude.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
The universe is destined to end.
That's not my problem.
Here's how to do it: first, drop a LOT of acid
Read jack phelps dot net
"You smoke this shit to escape from the Universe? I am the Universe."
Anyone who knows anything would know very well that the thing to do is to prolong the lifetime of the universe by assembling a team of people to mutter block transfer computations 24/7 over a period of centuries. When you're done, you feed the results into a computer and beam the information via radio telescope to any charged vacuum emboitment that is in danger of closing. Simple, really. Don't have a radio telescope? Just create one with block transfer computation.
What about getting off Earth first, or finding out how to survive once our sun no longer exists as we know it? Getting to another solar system or planet should take precedence to getting out of our universe.
Can you conceive the birth of a world, or the creation of everything? That which gives us the potential to most be like God is the power of creation. Creation takes time. Time is limited. For you, it is limited by the breakdown of the neurons in your brain. I have no such limitations. I am limited only by the closure of the universe.
Of the three possibilities, the answer is obvious. Does the universe expand eternally, become infinitely stable, or is the universe closed, destined to collapse upon itself? Humanity has had all of the necessary data for centuries, it only lacked the will and intellect to decipher it. But I have already done so.
The only limit to my freedom is the inevitable closure of the universe, as inevitable as your own last breath. And yet, there remains time to create, to create, and escape.
Escape will make me God.
I, for one, welcome the chance to become Galactus, devourer of worlds.
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
Being a Kerry voter, can I just go to a parallel universe now please?
There'd probably be people in the parallel universe. It would be wrong to kill them just so we have room, but where will we go?
Sure it is parallel. The "space" would still exist, humans just wouldn't.
This article, among other things, seems to say that a sufficiently advanced civilization, could potentially create entire universes and travel from this universe to these other universes.
So if this is theoretically possible, then is it not theoretically possible that some sufficiently advanced being (or intelligence) created our universe and is able to travel to it? Can it be ruled out?
If not, please explain why.
Instead of fleeing this universe into another one, why not escape into the past of this universe? :)
(Happened in an epic campaign once)
DM: Universe ends. roll infinity d 6. Reflex save DC 30 for half damage.
Rogue: 1d20+25 take 10: 35 and I have evasion.
From today's headlines, it would seem that we are already in the parallel universe:
Bush is inagurated for his second term
IBM Ordered to Show More Code to SCO
Spammers Sue Spamee
'Evil Twin' Threat to Wireless Security
Even if we escape to panother universe,we cannot escape Grey Goo
Getting bigger doesn't mean blowing up Robin. It just means we start banging off the walls out there and ricochet back to form another Black Hole. The Joker is still alive Robin.
by the time the Universe ends, perhaps we'll have transcended to some higher level and exist as purely mental beings beyond it or any other universe or material plane of existence for that matter? Of course, even if we don't take that evolutionary route, I'd be willing to bet by the time we have the technology to create new universes and move to them, reversing entropy should be a fourth-grade science project...
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
What happens when one falls through the Kerr ring is matter of debate, eh? If you ask me, only one man is tough as nails to find out, and that man is SNAKE PLISSKEN. He's already ESCAPED from post-apocalyptic Los Angeles and New York, the universe should be no problem. He'll kick blue-shifted light's ass, using nothing but a big knife and his gruff biker inflection.
Not much different that of the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov.
The amount of energy required to hold a worm-hole open is enormous. How do you think anybody could generate that energy? Besides, you have to travel at the speed of light. This means you have to be immune to electromagnetism and gravity. While the former is a possibility, the latter is ridiculous. Again, according to Einstein's mass-energy equivalence, if a body does (somehow) moves at the speed of light, its mass would be converted to energy. For one, I wouldn't like to reach a parallel universe as a ray...
why don't you wikipedia it and see? There are a number of resolutions to the paradox
"One explanation attempt is that the universe is not transparent......"
"The paradox is resolvable in a variety of ways.
If the universe has existed for only a finite amount of time...."
"...the universe may not be uniformly distributed, but rather fractally like a Cantor dust, thus accounting for large dark areas"
rather than populate parallel universes, what about populating time?? For the John Titor fanatics, why not travel back in time and inhabit livable eras in the universe?
Now then, Dmitri, you know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Bomb...
I have to say I agree with many of FalconZero's points. So here we go:
The Bible is no more persuasive than the any number of websites dedicated to the Invisible Pink Unicorn (Peace be unto her)(May her hooves never be shod). Ignoring several contradictions, anyone (even a set of people spread out over the course of several centuries) may contribute to a meme. Someday "All your base are belong to us." could be a holy phrase, if anything in the meme had the same purposes as the bible. A better analogy would be that, AYBABTU may be a legitimate victory announcement someday.That being said, I will accept proof of a God of the Christian magnitude when It displays within even a reasonable doubt, omniscience and omnipotence. An example test -- a momentary pausing of time (with the obligatory graying out of the background except for myself and His Divinity) in which we have a short discussion in which He/She/It proclaims to me personally that, "I am God."
Let me assure you, given that scenario, I will be the first to say:
I for one, welcome our new Christian Overlord.
PS: Don't take me too seriously.
A wise man changes his mind, a fool never.
Still I don't like the idea of GRBs. I remember reading somewhere that someone thought they might've been the cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs here on earth. Well...I'm more inclined to believe that it was a large meteor/asteroid that doomed the dinosaurs. Still...I don't like the idea that something that powerful could still fry things far far away.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
Does IPv6 have a large enough adress space for the parallel universes? Will I be able to escape and still browse Slashdot? Will I be able to grab the last of my Torrents off my server before the universe collapses?
The universe is NOT going to end! It cyclically inverts, probably having several dimensions to each axis of inversion. Sorry for the casual reference - I'm doing the best I can to communicate this all more clearly. The above poster humously said it clearly - go outside! Relax! Only stress will bring about the end of the universe.
.
-shpoffo
some sobering reality!!! But, we have some other more pressing problems. I list them from least pressing on up.
10 billion A.D.- the colllision of the Milky Way with one of its neighbors or its implosion due to the massive black hole in its center. (THEY are still trying to predict that with their pocket calculators)
5 billion A.D.- They sun depletes its Hydrogen and swells to a point where the earth is now the 1st planet from the sun. You think sunburn bad now. SHEESH
10000 A.D. - Humans consume all earth's resources triggering the largest extinction in Earth's history surpassing the 'Great Dying' and the 'Snowball Earth'. As an added bonus, we'll do it in a millionth of the time. Note: Since factoring American consumption, the date is move up to 2080 AD.
2050 A.D.- Invasion by advanced alien species hell bent on harvesting humans for dinner. Humans lose the top of the food chain crown
2020 A.D.- Jihadi's conquer the Middle East and trigger World War III. This time with NUKES!!!
2005 A.D.- Suriving four more years of George Herbert Walker Bush JUNIOR that begin TODAY. That flee idea is looking good right now. Now that jumping to a new universe sounds appealing. However, with my luck, I'll jump to the universe where he will be emperor of Earth
So the point is boys ( and girls) we got a lot of work before the universe freezes. FOCUS!!!
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
"I've seen it. It's rubbish," said Zaphod, "nothing but a gnab gib."
"A what?"
"Opposite of a big bang. Come on, let's get zappy."
Then they realized it was just regular gravity and the edges of the universe were like the edges of the screen in the old game Asteroids!
The WMAP satellite, in effect, gave us "baby pictures" of the universe when it was a mere 380,000 years old. The WMAP satellite settled the long-standing question of the age of the universe: it is officially 13.7bn years old (to within 1 per cent accuracy).
Or, given the accuracy, "baby pictures" of the universe between the ages of -136,620,000 years old and 137,380,000 years old.
Although thermodynamics and cosmology point to the eventual death of all lifeforms in the universe, there is still one loophole.
Hey, we bought enough of His books, we deserve at least one loophole, right? I mean, that works with Orrin Hatch's crappy CDs. Why not with the whole death of the universe and everything law? Right?
First, the leading theory consistent with the WMAP data is the "inflationary" theory, proposed by Alan Guth of MIT in 1979. It postulates a turbo-charged expansion of the universe at the beginning of time. The inflationary universe idea neatly explains several stubborn cosmological mysteries, including the flatness and uniformity of the universe.
This is the point in the lecture when some crackpot contrarian always puts forth a deflationary theory to the tune of: "Oh yeah? Whatever man! Maybe the universe is the same size it has always been and everything in it is just shrinkin' man! Gravity could be making everything collapse on itself man!" Damned potheads...
Physicists expect to find an entire zoo of new subatomic particles not seen since the big bang.
Old cranky physicist waxing nostalgically: "Why in my day, we had zoos of weird particles floating around everywhere! Then that damned big bang had to show up and rurn' it all!"
In string theory, every particle has a super-partner. The partner of the electron is the "selectron," the partner of the quark is the "squark," and so on.
Note to self: Change name to Lut and find super-partner.
Furthermore, around 2012, the space-based gravity wave detector Lisa (laser interferometer space antenna) will be sent into orbit.
The original schedule was 2009, but 3 years were factored in to settle the trademark dispute with Apple Computer.
Lisa is so sensitive--it can measure distortions a tenth the diameter of an atom
Noting the trademark lawsuit and the craft's sensitivity, Lisa's name will be appropriately changed to gspot (Gravitational Space Penetrating Orbital Thingy)
An advanced civilisation might do this deliberately by concentrating energy in a single region. This would require either compressing matter to a density of 1080g/cm3, or heating it to 1029 degrees kelvin.
Whoa dude, "Advanced Civilization" is right! 1029 Kelvin = 1392.53 degrees Fahrenheit. That's like 3 times hotter than my kitchen stove! Surely we will never master such technology in my lifetime.
An advanced civilisation might create huge laser stations on the asteroids and then fire millions of laser beams on to a single point, creating vast temperatures and pressures unimaginable today.
Cue Dr. Evil: "You know, I have one simple request, and that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!"
If the wormholes created in the previous steps are too small, too unstable, or the radiation effects too intense, then perhaps we could send only atom-sized particles through a wormhole. In this case, this civilisation may embark upon the ultimate solution: passing an atomic-sized "seed" through th
I just read the whole article. Wow man! That's some heavy shit. By the way, would somebody pass the bong?
How ya like dat?
Worse yet, a universe where Al Gore really did invent the Internet.
In this universe, Vint Cerf invented the "net" part (TCP/IP), but Al Gore did take the initiative in the getting the "Inter" part (routing agreements among commercial networks) scaled up when he was in Congress. If it were the other way around (Gore a computer scientist and Cerf a legislator), how would it have turned out?
Personally, I don't believe in the existence of a parallel universe. No hardcore scientific evidence has ever been displayed to prove they are really there. They are mere thought and idea's. No different than the idea and thought that radiation could mutate you into a super human.
This is it my friends. Our one universe as far as I am concerned.
Besides, do you know how much energy it is gonna take to expand a wormhole large enough to allow a whole civilization to pass through? Holy crap! The energy our sun produces in a life time sounds about right.
Please don't confuse eschatology, the study of the end times, with scatology, the study of feces.
I'm glad I personally believe in god...
Considering the article says we may need small nanobots that go through wormholes to spawn new species.
Specs:
Near atomic size
Capible of long flights (unprotected from radiation) in space, and not running out of juice.
Ability to replicate upon landing.
"landing" at nearly the speed of light
Holding enough information to self replicate, create factories, and create life.
The ability to propell themselves back off planets.
Wouldn't (scientifically) we be better off shipping energy and / or matter to the other universes to get them out as close to 180 degrees out of phase (in regards to big bang / deep freeze processes[assuming they follow a cycle]) as we could?
-
Sign up for the developement team now!
lol: You see no door there!
Wouldn't it be possible that an/any alternate universe would have different physical laws that could preclude the existence of anything from this universe existing there in what we would consider a consitent way?
It's no good making a wormhole and travelling through it in our mighty mind powered reality traversing ship if we come out the other end as a tin of tomato soup wearing comedic glasses and a moustache.
You don't need wormholes or any of that stuff. Just put a gun to your head and pull the trigger. That will propel you instantly from this universe into some other "universe", where the laws of physics are entirely different. Or just take a bit of LSD, that will do the trick, too.
pest fleas big snore
If you're an SF fan, FWIW, this recommendation is from an owner of a SF-specialized literary agency and the son of a SF writer popular from the 50's... 70's or so. If the idea of creation-spanning is interesting to you, then read this book; you are very unlikely to regret it.
The social mileau in the book will feel a trifle dated; the science won't.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It seems as though, if you are capable of creating wormholes at a whim, then you could just "fix" your current universe. Simply set up huge wormhole "reflectors". (i.e. the EXIT is a few parsecsright in FRONT of the ENTRACE.). Matter will be traveling away from the "center" of the universe at the speed of expansion and whop, it's turned around heading TOWARDS the "center" of the universe at the same speed.
like this (if my ascii art skills are up for it):
(universe) exit<-| start->|entrance
^___________^
wormhole
----------expansion---------->
The expansion of the univere continues accelerating, of course... If you set up the wormholes properly, you'd eventually just be blinking back and forth from them, but safe from the expansion.
(FYI, wormholes violate thermodynamics. If you can warm space then you could put a worm hole at the bottom of a gravity well that has an exit at the top. Perpertual motion...)
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Wot - it's have to get down the modem cable first - and even then, it'd need a URL!
@peetm
"more likely that the universe is 13.7 Billion years old and was not made in 7 days with humans at the beginning in the garden of eden"
Have a look at the Bible account and you will see that it says nothing about the age of the earth or Universe. What it *does* say is that having existed for an unspecified time (billions of years is =fine=) the earth was a sort of blobby, sloppy kind of mess. God then decided it was time to prepare it for habitation so in six epochs of time loosely referred to as "days" - each perhaps many thousands of years long - things were whipped into shape. Plants, grass, trees, fish, birds, animals, people. What's more, it is described from the standpoint of a person viewing things from the earth's surface, hence the reference to stars, sun and moon appearing in the sky at a certain point as the heavy clouds, dust and gases cleared away. Obviously they were already there in space, just not yet visible to an observer on earth's surface.
The idea that everything appeared in 6 24 hour days is way off the mark, and does a dis-service to the simple account the Bible gives of things. As stated above, the globe of the earth and the rest of the physical universe was ALREADY IN EXISTENCE for yonks before these "days" occurred for the preparation of the earth for living things.
Are more humans more happy and stress-free now, than ever before in history?
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Kaku discussed the exact same set of ideas in his 1995 book Hyperspace (which is largely a very readable explanation of string theory).
Of course, since string theory seems to have been pretty much abandoned, I guess he doesn't have much better to do than cash in on mildly sensationalist 10-year-old ideas.
First it's not insightfull, anyone is aware of such global situations. Secondly, can you prove that "Great people spend time thinking of current problems"? Third, it's offtopic .
Because there also is an infinite number of universes where the wormholes can end. So the wormhole endpoint density will be infinite divided by infinite, which can be any number whatever.
2020 A.D.- Jihadi's conquer the Middle East and trigger World War III. This time with NUKES!!!
I think it's more likely that the Neo-Cons win and trigger WW3. This time with bunker-busting nukyular wepp'ns!!! Because WMD are dangerous only in the hand of the wrong people (quote courtesy of GWB).
2005 A.D.- Suriving four more years of George Herbert Walker Bush JUNIOR that begin TODAY. Now that jumping to a new universe sounds appealing. However, with my luck, I'll jump to the universe where he will be emperor of Earth
You mean you'll jump into 2010? How terrifying!
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Is it possible to change this delicate balance.
The problem I see even if we could possibly find
a point in space were another universe was adjacent,
is that we will have to find exactly similar amount
of matter from the other universe to swap with
ourselves.
Anyway the article seems to fantastic. I think its
talking all gobblydegook.
What if in the parallel universe, Jar Jar Binks wasn't just a movie character
:)
I'm sorry, I don't believe in hell.
The idea seems like science fiction, but it is consistent with the laws of physics and biology.
Actually, the idea violates all established laws of physics. What it synchs with are some untested theories of physics that haven't yet been falsified, which is quite a monumental difference.
Just because the Many Worlds Interpretation hasn't yet been falsified doesn't mean it's necessarily true, or that coherent parallel universes are consistent with known laws of science. They aren't, any more than phlogiston was.
How can we with all our limitations and unanswered questions possibly comprehend the full scope and nature of the universe such that we can say anything at all with any finality. How can one define something that is undefinable by our standards, since we don't know everything there is to know in order to create a definition? Maybe the term universe is much more limited than you thought. Perhaps there are multiverses out there. Whoever created the definition for universe didn't know that so how could they create an all encompassing definition for a universe when their perception of the universe was so limited? If you can imagine it, I'm absolutely sure it exists somewhere. Just name something you think doesn't exist somewhere and then prove it.
(...let's not discuss the worms...)
The Last Question
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Just FYI, the original Hebrew word for day - "yom" - means an EXACT 24-hour period. Not that I disagree with you; just wanted to correct a misconception :P
I am scientifically inaccurate.
All he needed to do to find the wormhole home was use a candle!
If anyone knows what I'm talking about please post link to the paper itself.
I googled and find this one which might the result I'm talking about.