Slashdot Mirror
A Snapshot of the Universe 3 Trillion Years From Now
ultracool wrote with a link to a Science Daily article that requires that you think long term. Really long term. Case Western Reserve University physicists are theorizing that trillions of years from now the universe will become 'static'. Essentially, the information that we use to gauge our Galaxy's position in the universe will have moved beyond the 'visible horizon. "What remains will be 'an island universe' made from the Milky Way and its nearby galactic Local Group neighbors in an overwhelmingly dark void ... The researchers followed up that discussion with one tracking early elements like helium and deuterium produced in the Big Bang. They predict systems that allow us to detect primordial deuterium will be dispersed throughout the universe to become undetectable, while helium in concentrations of approximately 25 percent at the Big Bang will become indiscernible as stars will produce far more helium in the course of their lives to cloud the origins of the early universe."
if we can't even correctly predict the weather 5 days from now
how can we expect to predict the universe 3 trillion years from now?
Science/philosophy went through stages of flat Earth, Earth at the center of the universe, everything made up of four elements... Granted, we progressed a bit in what we can measure and observe these days, but current structure and workings of the whole universe now, much less a trillion years later is not one of those things. We are most probably spinning fairy tales on what happens inside black holes, on other planets, in the center of our own planet or even with temperature changes on the surface. It might be amusing to plug big numbers into equations and end up with a wild picture of the world, but it's just an exercise in math and science fiction. Why don't we focus on getting more facts first? Better exploration of nearby planets and deep layers of the earth should be within our reach now.
Not content with the fact we will die in less than ten billionths of the time interval discussed in this story, some of us still obsess with thinking we know the answers to the universe.
How will this affect your behaviour today? Will you re-think going to that club? Will you pick up an extra piece of litter? Will you go and buy up all the compressed helium you can find?
Seriously.. can't we just leave the Big Answers to the Religions?
Just some point's I've thought of
Can we actually change something in the universe's future? I mean, if we were on earth or not, would it have any impact on the universe's future? or we're just an ant in at a very big forest?
If we can change something in the Macro level of the universe's acts, can we change the universe so it will fit our needs for a long term (billions of years)?
Read and Comment at my BLOG
!!!
Unselfish actions pay back better
Interesting.. Except that Hinduism doesnt really exist. It was given a name by discoverers, but is really much more diverse than any other religion, because it isnt really a religion either. You can be a Christian and a "Hindu". Hinduism accepts that because you are actively pursuing the truth, alas other religions cannot accept that so easily.
The creation myth comes from the Vedas, which is more scientific than myth and religion.
I'm not sure it will matter. That is a hypothetical observation assuming that human-descendants, whatever they are, or other form of life will be around that long. Political turmoil with respect to life right how makes it hard to plan for a hundred years from now. Then there is the potential ecological turmoil if the scientists are right about greenhouse gases and humanity doesn't curtail its ecologically destructive habits. For the moment, there is no alternative habitat. Even if Mars is terraformed, which is difficult and unlikely, there's no way to move billions there, and there's not enough gravity and other factors to keep a stable atmosphere there anyway.
While a dense enough universe could collapse into a "Big Crunch", that is not the hypothesized ending of our universe. The density of our universe is not dominated by matter, but by energy, such that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. You're right that it's difficult to extrapolate to a time several orders of magnitude greater than the current age of the universe, as currently-unknown physics could end up dominating. (Someone observing the universe about 8 billion years ago would have been unable to measure the energy density of the universe, for instance.) But that does mean we shouldn't even try?
There's no way for them to know what will be "undiscernable" to instruments and intelligence in 3 trillion years. Scientists a century and a half ago would have limited our universe to detection by optical telescopes. In just a decade from now, "dark matter detectors" (for example) could push that "horizon" beyond today's wildest imaginings. "Only" a trillion years from now, if we could possibly keep a consistent identity with whatever intelligence descends from us to then, "we" will likely have intelligence of even subtler, more distant phenomena.
Or we'll have returned to optical telescopes, or much more likely, won't exist to know anything at all. At which point the "discernable" universe will be more or less infinitessimal, or zero.
--
make install -not war
On the subject of misunderstandings about Hinduism, it bugs me that some people consider it to be a polytheistic philosophy. Not anymore so than most varieties of Christianity, with their Patris-Fílii-Spíritus Sancti trinity.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
A score -1 Ignorant would be entirely appropriate. All the parent post is saying is that oooh, nasty little scientists got it wrong 500 years ago, therefore they're equally full of crap about things I don't understand. We got a pretty fucking good idea about the inner workings of our planet. We got a damn good understanding of meteorology and climatology, and we're progressing nicely in cosmology despite ignorance peddlers like you. Your post isn't even logically consistent--poor dumbass scientists got it wrong with a flat earth, got it wrong with the four elements (it's called alchemy...what eventually turned into the science of chemistry once all the religious/mystical woo woo was ripped out), can't predict with 100% accuracy the weather, the fuckers can't grab their asses with both hands. But they can build a rocket...
<br>
So, since scientists are a bunch of idiots, how about you, and your expertise in, uh, something or other come up with a brand new rocket fuel. Might I suggest penguins? Worked fine on whaling ships near Antarctica. *Houston, we need more speed* *Roger that, Epimetheus. Toss another penguin in the burner*
It is a beautiful term.
>Isn't the universe supposed to collapse sooner than that?
.. greedy to say the least.
1) No, that's what we used to think before, but now our current measurement indicates that the expansion of the universe is accelerating not slowing towards a big crunch.
2) We don't even have an interesting theory (as in a theory which gives testable new predictions) which is compatible with both general relativity and quantum theory, so asking for a theory for what happened before the big-bang is
3) What is silly is comparing myths with science.