Far Future Will See No Evidence of Universe's Origin

Dr. Eggman writes "According to an article on Ars Technica and its accompanying General Relativity and Gravitation journal article 'The Return of a Static Universe and the End of Cosmology', in the far future of the universe all evidence of the origin of the universe will be gone. Intelligences alive 100-billion-years from now will observe a universe that appears much the way our early 1900s view of the universe was: Static, had always been there, and consisted of little more than our own galaxy and a islands of matter. 'The cosmic microwave background, which has provided our most detailed understanding of the Big Bang, will also be gone. Its wavelength will have been shifted to a full meter, and its intensity will drop by 12 orders of magnitude. Even before then, however, the frequency will reach that of the interstellar plasma and be buried in the noise--the stuff of the universe itself will mask the evidence of its origin. Other evidence for the Big Bang comes from the amount of deuterium and helium isotopes in the universe.'"

Comments

But even worse

[catbutt]

by then, we'll be dead, which seems like the bigger problem.

Re:But even worse

[Anonymous Coward]

At that point you must subscribe to the "We are all gods" view of human potential.

Maybe he's a Mormon? :-)

Re:But even worse

[nomadic]

by then, we'll be dead, which seems like the bigger problem.

Well, let's narrow it down; the bigger problem is -I'll- be dead. That I think is something we all can agree is the biggest problem.

Re:But even worse

[buswolley]

93 year old catbutt? Gross.

Re:But even worse

[lord_sarpedon]

A China full of Qs huh? I can just imagine the untapped potential for humanity that would spring forth at that point.

I can see it now -- penis enlargement then just a snap of the fingers away...

Finally, a solution to spam! 100 billion years!

Re:But even worse

[rho]

Here's what's always annoyed me about astronomers/cosmologists/telescope jockeys of all stripes. They love to talk about how what they do is science, and to the extent that they apply the scientific method to their work, they are right. But simply because they are applying the scientific method does not make what they produce a fact. After crunching some numbers, the space geeks come back to us and let us know that the Universe is 4 billion years old, not 5 billion years old like we thought.

What? Only an idiot would say that. But "according to current theories, if all our observations are correct, and not accounting for things that we don't know and/or don't understand, we put a date of 4 billion years on the age of the Universe" doesn't really sync with how NOVA likes the TV show to flow. And of course coming out with a hard "fact" like that will totally piss off Vladimir Boroshitz who really ticked you off at the last astronomy convention when he hoarked the last Zima from the cash bar.

It has always seemed to me that the further out into space you go, the more positive the starfags get. The composition and likelihood of a galaxy 200 million light-years away to contain life? "Pretty good!" Closer to home, they're all "we don't know this, we don't know that", because that means research money to send Lego to Europa to dig for microbes.

Re:Assuming of course...

[Timesprout]

Please, if you want to contribute to the conversation then make sure your science is grounded in Star Trek, anything else will just confuse us.

Re:I'm sure

[tomhudson]

"that this article will be relevant in 100 billion years."

Nah, it'll have experienced the "dupe death" as its reposted countless times, each time increasing its entrophy, losing a few letters here, having a few more arranged there ..

Today:

The cosmic microwave background, which has provided our most detailed understanding of the Big Bang, will also be gone. Its wavelength will have been shifted to a full meter, and its intensity will drop by 12 orders of magnitude. Even before then, however, the frequency will reach that of the interstellar plasma and be buried in the noise--the stuff of the universe itself will mask the evidence of its origin. Other evidence for the Big Bang comes from the amount of deuterium and helium isotopes in the universe.'"

Today + n dupes:

detailed understanding will also be gone.
a full meter,
the frequency will reach that of the interstellar plasma and be buried in
the noise--the stuff of the universe itself
evidence for the Big Bang comes from the isotopes in the universe.'"

Today + n * x dupes:

le t
the r e
b e
the Big Bang
!

Time zero

*

Time zero +1

\ | /
-- * --
/ | \

Time zero + z

The cosmic microwave background, which has provided our most detailed understanding of the Big Bang, will also be gone. Its wavelength will have been shifted to a full meter, and its intensity will drop by 12 orders of magnitude. Even before then, however, the frequency will reach that of the interstellar plasma and be buried in the noise--the stuff of the universe itself will mask the evidence of its origin. Other evidence for the Big Bang comes from the amount of deuterium and helium isotopes in the universe.'"

Because we all know, what goes around, comes around.

Re:This really makes you wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

What you mean like His blueprints? It's amazing what can disappear in 6000 years...

Copyright?

[geoff lane]

I found this hidden within the value of Pi expressed in base 11...

Copyright: Year Dot God. All rights reserved.

This universe represents copyrighted material and may only be reproduced in whole for personal or classroom use. It may not be edited, altered, or otherwise modified, except with the express permission of God.

Re:Perhaps

[Timesprout]

Personally I was very disappointed by the Big Boing theory, I found it bounced around with the main issues and tended to dampen my interest.

Re:How much has already been lost?

[Admiral Ag]

No. In ancient Hebrew he would have written "YH DD T" or more likely "YHWH WS HR LLZ!"

Y100B Compliant

[Ryunosuke]

How can I tell if my computer is Y100B compliant? I want to be able to read about this on slashdot in 100B years

Finally, I got it.

[MrCopilot]

1. Take polaroids.
2. wait 100 billion years.
3 profit.

Seriously this implies all information from now will be lost. Pretty Dim view.

Peak hydrogen

[benhocking]

Where I'm getting is that the universe has a finite budget of hydrogen and keeps using it fast. (Well, "fast" by cosmic scales.) And then some of it gets buried in black holes and the like too. So planning to have main sequence stars in 100 billion years, is sorta like planning to still be using the oil in the middle east by then: chances are it will have run horribly thin, long time before that.

Bah, you Alpha Centaurians and your "peak hydrogen" alarmism! But seriously, we're not burning through Hydrogen fast even by cosmic scales. The universe still has 75% of its original hydrogen left. Presumably, the rate at which we'll use it will decrease as we use it up. However, you have a valid point that by 100 billion years (~8x the current age), there's a good chance that the 75% figure might be more like 7.5%. (I'm completely making up that last figure.)

Re:Perhaps - Information from the near-future

[Proudrooster]

According to my friend from the near-distant future, this is how it all works:

1. 1. Space in the universe must be conserved and can not be expanded or contracted, i.e. the universe is not a ballon, but the way we percieve it changes, just like in Einstein's Relativity.
   2. Space is a field which is created by matter/energy.
   3. The space field has multiple properties included time, gravity, electromagnetism, and magnetism.
   4. The equation which unifies what we percieve as space-time, gravity, and electromagnetism is called the McMinnis equation and looks very similar to Maxwell's equations and has six pieces.
   5. The amount of energy in the universe is not constant as we currently believe and points to a source outside the universe. Some existentialists have theorized this is the evidence of a creator influencing outcomes.
   

We also discover that the graviton and virtual massless photons (which we believe make up magnetic fields) do not exist and are merely properties of the space field which surrounds energy.

As far as future energy sources go, ethanol dies a horrific death after totally screwing up the food supply. The nanotech guys develop new batteries which can be charged as fast as capacitors and hold 5000 times the amount of energy in the same package size. The future is primarily powered by geothermal wells which generate electricity and fusion is never fully perfected but does produce about 35% of the global electricity supply. There is a debate that the geothermal wells are cooling the core of the planet which will have disastrous consequences and descendant of Al Gore makes a documentary about it. In other news: The US/China start a colony on the moon, but something about moon dust causes lung cancer (like asbestos). Even though it is attempted 10 times, iNASA is never successful in establishing a base on Mars, but dooms many astronauts. The war in Iraq lasts for nearly 20 years.

Hope that helps and please keep this information to yourself.