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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.'"
by then, we'll be dead, which seems like the bigger problem.
unless it starts to shrink back into itself and form a singularity before the next Big Bang. But hopefully by then we will have worked out the tech to create an n-dimentional bubble to sit in. Anyone else here read books on string theory? :)
...that those "intelligences" alive 100 billion years from now won't be any more intelligent that we are, and won't have any better technology to separate out the information from the noise. Who cares anyway? It won't matter to me.
All pass beyond reach of medicine. None pass beyond the reach of love.
I really wonder what we've missed simply because the evidence is long gone.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Sure, maybe the evidence we have now to back up our theories on the beginning of the universe will not exist in the far future, but what makes people think that this is the only evidence there is? I'm sure that by the time current evidence become unavailable, future scientists will already find other evidence to replace it.
Reality is the original Rorschach.
- The current model of the universe's origin is essentially correct. What if we're the ones living in a "post-cosmology universe," and the evidence for what really happened has faded so much that we can't detect it?
- Currently observable stars, background radiation, etc., are all we or anyone else will ever be able to observe. Almost surely, we'll come up with better technology to observe the stuff we already know to look for; quite possibly, we'll discover entirely new things (different forms of radiation, etc.) to use in forming a more complete picture. The same goes for our hypothetical observers in the far future.
- Human perception is as good as it gets. Anything living 100 billon years from now will be so different from us that it may perceive the world around it in completely different ways, and will accordingly have different technology for astronomy and everything else.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
that this article will be relevant in 100 billion years.
In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war...
...anecdotal, but it'll be there: it is probable that the article will be duped on slashdot until at least 100 billion years from now.
News flash: Ars Technica will also be gone by 100 years from now and all of us readers will be gone then too.
"Mortality just snuck up on me and stole my soul." --Slashdot ID #1 (RIP)
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
But on the off chance there isn't another Big Bang, I wonder whether we could build a repository that would have any chance of lasting that long? (yes, I know about the disks on the voyager probes, but are they even close to being duarble enough?)
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
Let us all microwave a burrito for a couple moments to mourn the coming expansion of microwave radiation frequency, much like our burritos will soon explode from being left in for too long.
We have a very brief glimpse in the overall timeline of the universe. For all we know, the universe will switch directions of movement sooner than we expect. It could be that what we know of as the universe is actually just crap floating in the lungs of a huge beast and the universe shifts back and forth with each breath.
Honestly I never understood what gave scientists the idea that they would ever have enough of a clue to know what was going on with the universe. I'm not saying it's wrong to do. Perhaps some awesome realization will come from it. I just really hope that there aren't any scientists that truly believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is exactly what is happening out there.
containing these profundities in some universal code. Or should we avoid potential embarrassment
and sit on this one a while just in case we learn new physics in the next eon or two.
To be fair these scientist probably do have something interesting to say about the long term evolution of the universe
implied by contemporary theoretical models. I would appreciate it if they didn't try to describe it in terms
pseudo-physical semi-philosophical techno-babble like the "anthropic principle". GAG.
I guess that's what you have to do to get picked up by a rag among rags.
What is the point of this article? That we should be planning for 100 billion years into the future, when the whole universe is around 14 billion years old? We can't even get off this damned rock yet and until we can there's no chance of our species outlasting the sun going red giant and nova which is no where near 100 billion years out.
Interesting to ponder but of not much use even to the theoreticians at this stage.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
So does this mean god didn't create everything? I saw an episode of family guy where god lit one of his farts & it made the big bang
Whats the harm in yelling 'Computer, end program!'? You could be living in Star Trek! Go on.. give it a try.
Maybe we'll be around to tell them about it.
Lemme guess, religious wingnut?
Then we'll just pop over into an alternate universe and study that one.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
No. In ancient Hebrew he would have written "YH DD T" or more likely "YHWH WS HR LLZ!"
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
IANAP, but if we are using our current understanding of the universe to make this claim, how do we know there is not some yet-to-be-discovered method of detecting the evidence of the origin of the universe in the far future?
Ronald said nothing. He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.
Basically we have no responsibility to anyone but ourselves. Any species which exist in 100 billion years can go and get stuffed.
Deleted
How can I tell if my computer is Y100B compliant? I want to be able to read about this on slashdot in 100B years
2. wait 100 billion years.
3 profit.
Seriously this implies all information from now will be lost. Pretty Dim view.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Just as an example, current thinking is that we're the first technically advanced society on earth, because we see no archaeological traces of previous societies. But, what if the previous society (or societies) had advanced technology that (a) was used to scrub the earth of their low-tech origins, and (b) left no traces when the society vanished, much as ice sculptures leave no traces when they melt?
Is there any real evidence against this sort of thing? (Occam's Razor, I know. But that's an incredibly pitiful rebuttal...)
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
for the fundies. Oh wait, it won't matter because surely they will be raptured up long before then. Right?
Perhaps and perhaps not.
The current living "record holder" is 114. The Oldest Human Beings
No, he wrote "Sorry for the inconvenience."
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Let's put things in perspective a bit:
The universe itself is 13.7 billion of years old. Our Sun is only about 5 billion years old.
In this interval, the universe already burned a heck of a lot of Hydrogen to Helium, and even a lot of Helium to Carbon and so on until iron. You can't really have a star powered by fusing anything heavier, because fusing heavier stuff actually takes energy.
(Anything higher than that is formed in a supernova blast. Basically some of the immense energy of the supernova is used to fuse some of the ejected elements into even higher density stuff.)
Hydrogen is really the low hanging fruit of star fuel. It's for stars what the coal mines were for the industrial revolution. It's damn easy to start fusing hydrogen. (Easier if you have some heavier elements as catalysts to start the reaction, but the hydrogen will be the fuel anyway.) It's damn hard to start fusing anything else.
Even helium is tricky. It requires some _immense_ pressures and temperatures, and a state that's already degenerate matter. It even starts to happen somewhere between 100 and 200 million Kelvin. It's also a bloody unstable process. The released power is proportional IIRC to the temperature raised to the _30th_ power, so it's easy for it to run away: more power released rises the temperature some more, which rises the power some more (and rather abruptly at that), which rises temperature, etc. A star the size of our sun would just blow itself up almost instantly if it was made of Helium and actually ignited Helium fusion.
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.
In 100 billion years, probably the best you could get is a brown dwarf, a.k.a., a star that doesn't actually fuse anything, but it heated up when collapsing into a star, and will need a horribly long time to cool down. And hopefully a planet that's close enough to it, to be just warm enough.
They'll be few and far in between though, so no telling if one will be close enough to move to it.
Also, lemme say: the only chance of life there will be that someone moves to it. If you look at long time Earth history, the Sun started a lot cooler when the Earth atmosphere was made of methane, so the massive greenhouse effect just helped keep temperature in the right band for life to appear. Then as the Sun heated up, life switched atmosphere to oxygen. We've been walking a tightrope on the border between turning into Venus (if life appeared just a little later) or turning into a deep-frozen snowball that kills everything (if photosynthesis started just a little earlier.) And we actually had a damn close shave with complete extinction, the planet-sized snowball kind.
A brown dwarf just doesn't follow that pattern. It doesn't gradually warm up, it actually starts (very very slowly) cooling down as soon as it formed. But you can pretty much approximate it as constant temperature, for the purpose of this discussion. And therein lies the problem: if it's cool enough for a methane-atmosphere planet to evolve life, that will turn into a permanent deep-frozen wasteland as soon as it evolves photosynthesis. And if it would be warm enough for an oxygen-atmosphere planet, then it's way too hot early when that planet is still methane-based. That planet will turn into Venus before it has half a chance to evolve life.
So pretty much in 100 billion years we're looking at a dead or dying universe anyway. Worrying that they'll have witch hunts is kinda silly, when, you know, there won't be anyone alive there.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It's entirely possible that this comment is the single funniest thing I've ever read on slashdot.
Scifi short story that takes place at the heat-death of our universe.
Topical? Yes!
Tipping encouraged. I'll be here all week.
These stories are free but worth money.
Light is red shifted from distant sources because, currently, space is literally expanding as light is passing through it. A simplified version is that of the Doppler effect, which is when a source of radiation is moving away from the observer. Now, if the universe were to eventually settle down and stop expanding, or even start contracting again, wouldn't that preserve the radiation at whatever wavelength it is at? Or in the case of contracting, begin to blue shift it? I am no expert in physics, but i dabble in astronomy and can't recall reading anything that addresses this.
any thoughts?
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch.
FTL isn't possible in the current models of science.
:-)
Always remember that the "Laws of Physics" are our own inventions (ie. merely the mathematics of our models/theories), and are not the Laws of Reality at all.
In fact we change the "Laws of Physics" all the time, whenever we create a new theory, so it's pretty obvious that what we're changing is just a human invention to help us understand how Reality behaves. The Laws of Reality in contrast never change at all, we assume. But of course we can never know them, as we can only see how they make her behave.
FTL is impossible by our current models, but that doesn't mean that Reality doesn't allow it. Given that we've only been creating scientific models for a few centuries, and that we have potentially billions of years ahead of us, it would be rather foolish to suggest that we will never find a model that provides a way.
"um, hello? ... I'm standing right here!" - God.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
As someone who works in the astronomy of a major university, let me tell you that there is a massive amount of evidence for the big bang.
One problem with obtaining absolute proof of the big bang is that, according to the most recent widely-agreed with model, light didn't exist in a way we should be able to detect until hundreds of thousands of years after the initial 'bang'.
Starting with the evidence Hubble collected, and most recently with the Nobel prize given to Smoot and Mather for their work on cosmic background radiation, its pretty much a lock science-wise.
Every time I hear criticism of a strong and widely-regarded theory (i.e. evolution, big bang), I am never able to get a good answer on motivation. What motivation would the scientific community have to want to espouse and stubbornly defend weak theory? I'd like an answer.
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch.
We think we have it all figured out... dark matter, gravity, time and space. We even think the speed of light is the natural legal limit of all things in motion. In 100 billion years, if the human race hasn't fucked itself out of existence, I'm quite certain they will know much more than we do now. Discoveries will be made by that time which are simply out of our reach limited by our ignorance, understanding and perception of everything we know now right now. The statement that nobody will know how the universe happened in 100 billion years is just silly.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
wtf? 1st of all we don`t know that that is the way the universe was created... ...::[like man evolved from monkey]::..
Hurraaayyyy!
--
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How much information about our universe that was obvious to civilizations that rose and fell a few billion years ago is lost forever as well?
This question is not so much a cosmological one as a philosophical one. That far in the future, any intelligence could, if increasing its accuracy and precision model of the universe at the rate we have in our recorded history, find other evidence than any of which we conceive today to reconstruct the early conditions. Much like we have kinds of evidence now of which no one conceived in 1900.
Another way to pop this conundrum is to ask whether anyone has proven that we will not be able to record our current information about the Universe's origin in such a way that the distant future will just be able to read its history, rather than start from scratch with matter/energy/whatever found ambient in its environment. It seems likely any recordings from today would be lost over so long a duration, but again, we're just getting started making recordings and thinking about long histories.
Unless someone can prove that any recordings of current origin info made now will strictly inevitably be lost over that long time, even if we used all the matter and energy in which we could possibly record that info, then they cannot prove that the future will be unable to have that info.
Wake me when they're so sure.
--
make install -not war
I just wouldn't call that "fast", even by (currently) cosmic scales. For example, I'm 37. If you told me I could get to some destination in 74 years (for example), I wouldn't call that "fast".
Now, here's a real calculation, albeit one that's still based on completely unfounded assumptions: if the decay is exponential, then 100 billion years from now (when the universe is apprxomately 114 billion years old), there will be approximately 0.75^(114/14) or 9.6% of the hydrogen left.
On the other hand, if the decay is linear, we'll have -104% hydrogen left, so we'll have to fuse anti-hydrogen! (Yes, that's just a joke.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I wonder if they will still have Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters
What is interesting to me about this scenario is that a currently scientific idea will become unscientific over time. What is now a scientific theory, testable and supported by empirical data, will become nothing more than the ancestors *claims* of empirical data.
Can the claims of the ancestors be trusted, when they suggest such preposterous experiential data as a "sky full of galaxies" and "background radiation"?
If they can, then science is not the only valid way to learn about the universe. We can also learn from the experiences of those who came before us, even if we cannot experience the same thing they did.
Science is a useful way to pursue truth, but it is not the only way. I think people need to see that, and this is a good example of how that is true.
... is filled with creationists!
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Guillermo Gonzalez was right again in "The Privileged Planet" - the Earth is uniquely positioned in time to observe the universe. This news is at least 3 years old. Why is it just now appearing on /. ?
You should read Hewligan's response (in case you miss it).
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
However, that 25% figure ignores the hydrogen that gets trapped in black holes, etc. Still, I think you're right that we will still have plenty of hydrogen in 100 billion years. (I don't know, but I think the black hole absorption of hydrogen to be less than the consumption of hydrogen due to fusion.) Peak hydrogen indeed!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
If the universe expands so much that information about the early days is lost in one way or another, then won't that information be destroyed? Isn't it impossible for information to be destroyed? Isn't information eternal?
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.
Unfortunately, you're forgetting to factor in the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Although energy will remain constant, free energy will decrease. Eventually, the universe will suffer a cold death. How sad.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Christ way to kill a joke.
Do you interrupt chicken-crossing-the-road jokes to talk about poultry science too?
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
You know... just to inform future generations.
Has the ring of truth to it. Mind you if you've got nanotech, cancer shouldn't be a problem. >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. Already happenned, look up supercapacitors, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapacitors, well maybe nearer 500-1000 times, but 1 and 5 Farad capacitors are now mainstream.
What motivation would the scientific community have to want to espouse and stubbornly defend weak theory? I'd like an answer.
:)
How about ego? It works something like this. 1) Get a Phd. 2) Join a faction 3) Defend whatever your faction believes so you can keep the spotlight and research money flowing your way, 4) ostracize and dismiss out of hand anyone who disagrees with you, because they are clearly misguided morons.
The classic case happened between some infallible dude named Pope Urban VIII and a bible scholar named Galileo. As it turns out, heavy objects do not fall faster than lighter objects and the earth isn't the center of our solar system. The jury is still out on whether the earth is the center of the Universe
Typically, before a well entrenched scientific theory dies, the people that hold those beliefs need to die as well. It's sad, but "CHANGE" and admitting to error isn't one of mankinds strengths. A good contemporary case study would be the George W. Bush presidency.
Something else I forgot to expound on. The new batteries hold their charge (almost) indefinately and do not discharge like capacitors. Technically, I think they bleed of charge at .3% per day, but from what I hear, it is amazing technology which even works at temperature extrememes making it suitable for mass transportation and automobiles. The future is truly amazing.
The ultimate question, though, is, what evidence are we missing about the universe now? In a less serious note, on our own little earth, the original paper containers that contained the seeds of life dropped off by the Vorlons a few billion years ago have long since vanished, along with the biodegradable remains of the probes periodically sent to manage our supposedly accidental evolution!
This is my sig.
What happens to all the data that is being collected now and why won't people from the future be able to read, work with, figure it out, whatever? Also why should we care? It's not like the planet will be habitable in even a million years at the rate we are destroying it.
They will have invented time travel some time in the next billion years. There will be tours to the big bang
Just make sure you keep your arms inside the ship at all times.
Table-ized A.I.
Thinking about what will happen in 100 billion years is not only unpractical, but also non scientific since there is no way of solid experimental verification of your adolescent fantasies.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Astronomers will see an horizon beyond the local gravitationally-bound group which will suggest spacetime expansion.
Also, analysis of long-lived first generation stellar objects (red dwarfs, brown dwarfs) will indicate primordial hydrogen / helium ratios and show a big-bang origin in the finite past.
The whole idea that the Universe will eventually just go quiet and cold... that we are just in an early energetic time, but all there is in the future is Infinite Heat Death where even subatomic particles have lost the ability to hold together.... is a rather depressing thought.
What's the point of coming up with, and defending, a stupid theory?
Well, ask a Creationist, and get an exciting glimpse into the mind of the truly paranoid. He'll be able to come up with all kinds of inane answers -- few of which are answers of any kind, but just restatements of the original question. Some examples off the top of my head...
1. It's so they can push their liberal / secularist agenda. (What agenda might that be? Nobody knows, really. Maybe the idea is that if we keep pushing evolution and cosmology, future generations won't believe in God. How does that help "liberals"? I guess it's so then nothing will stand in our way of killing babies!)
2. Blah blah blah persecution of my beliefs blah blah blah. (Listening to Christians whinge about being some kind of oppressed minority is absolutely hilarious. Not that this response answers the question.)
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
Try to think the complete picture. You need not only a brown dwarf, but also a planet that's in the right band, _and_ has the right planet type there (being in the right band doesn't help you much if you have the mass of Mercury and can't hold an atmosphere) _and_ has the right rotation speed _and_ plate tectonics (these two doomed Venus) _and_ is new enough to not have cooled down yet (100 billions is a freaking _huge_ time.)
I stand by what I've said: those will be few and far in between.
Let me also qualify that: few and far given that (A) there seems to be no way to travel faster than light, which puts a heck of a limit on how far we can look for one to move to, and (B) as per TFA, the universe will have expanded a _lot_ by then, so, really, everything outside our galaxy will be out of reach. And I don't mean out of reach as in "too far to bother there", but as in outside the causality cone, so even with magic drives and magic ships it's not even theoretically possible to get there. That kinda "out of reach."
And point B affects point A too. The galaxy itself will probably be freakin' huge by then, as in, billions of light years across. That doesn't just mean "whoa, even at light speed, you'd need an eternity to move to the other end", it means that by the time the signal even reaches you about a possibly habitable star at the other end, chances are that star would already be dead or dying.
So that puts a heck of a lot of limit on where you can look for the next planet to move to.
Also, that just makes me realize another detail: in an universe that stretched, there's a lot more space for the hydrogen to go. If you have one solar mass worth of hydrogen in a 100 lightyear sphere, that's not going to accrete into an actual star any time soon.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Most of these "tech predictions" cant even get 10 years ahead right, now they are trying to predict science in 100-billion years ?? Oh please. "Its wavelength will have been shifted to a full meter, and its intensity will drop by 12 orders of magnitude." - Perhaps in 100-billion years they may have slightly better technology than we have now, or did you miss this ?
What a completely ignorant thing to say. Who knows what intelligence will be like in 100 billion years.
The universe may have less than 100 billion years to go.
Some theories predict that the current expansion rate will
continue to increase due to dark energy. As this happens
gravity will no longer be able to keep the clusters of
galaxies together and as stated, only our own galaxy will be
visible to us. However as the dark energy increases, gravity
won't even be able to keep the galaxies and stars together and
our solar system will fly off on its' own. Soon after that,
the atomic forces that keep the atoms together will fail and
the sun, earth, and all atoms will fly apart in 'the big rig'.
Nothing will be left of the universe but a thin soup of sub-atomic
particles. The end time for this...about 37 billion years from now.
I don't know about you, but I don't know any PhDs who are in 'factions'. And can you show me where some of this apparently easy-to-get funding is? A place where they fund you for just being part of a faction sounds like a dream.
The debate between the Church and (insert scientists' name over the many years) was not ever a 'scientific debate'. It was empiricism finally having its say over dogma.
There have been wrong theories held by scientists for as long as there has been science, and there have been scientists who stubbornly defend those theories. But in general, through the scientific method, new theories gain clout through their explanatory power and ability to make predictions. Unfortunately the the systems within which we have observed what we call evolution are ridiculously complex with a whole lot of 'random'. Testable predictions in physics and chem are easier to come by a great deal in many cases, and that has hurt evolution's stance ONLY with the public. But I'm tired of defending evolution.
Sadly, due to crappy education and the relatively technical nature of science, most people are scientifically ignorant. Try explaining radiocarbon dating to someone who honestly believes the earth is 6,000 years old (they are everywhere). Sadder still is that these nutjobs are influencing POLICY for EVERYONE these days. You'll know who to blame when stem cell therapies are available in Europe 20 years before here. Public schools are a mess in this country, and yet people spend thousands of man hours trying to put 'intelligent design' right next to evolution. In their minds, a wizard up in the sky with a flowing robe and beard drawing up blueprints (whilst damning the non-believers no doubt) for the 'perfect' creation.
America is slipping in a lot of ways, and compromising science education isn't a step in the right direction.
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch.
You mean one of them happens to be the second nearest star to us. The nearest star is a main sequence star. ;)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
- 4807
will be- unrecognisable compared to 2007
at the rate things are presently going. And, err, that's "only" 2800 years away!! I don't know how you count your billions, but to me 100 billion is 100,000,000,000 years! I mean, Jesus, get a grip!! Our descendants will probably find our present discussion very amusing (if they generally find things amusing). Judas Priest, even scientists of just 50 years ago have become red-faced by saying a technology is impossible when it frequently turns out to be otherwise. If the "scientists" who made this study expect it to be meaningful then, I'm very disappointed. But they wouldn't be the only physicists in history that seem incapavle of thinking outside of their limited existence and experiences; most are like this. This attitude probably impedes our progress. So, the physicists should concentrate on making the future happen rather than speculating on what future scientists might think. Besides, how do we know that our future brethren didn't create the friggin' universe in the first place? The term "future" may lose it's meaning in thousands of years of physics research, not millions or (good lord) billions. Let's get a sense of scale if we can.We talk of saving all our data so that the future humans can understand the truth about the beginning of the universe, the truth implying what we currently hypothesize happened. But isn't it possible that the future people will use our own data to disprove this theory and prove another? The same thing happened when the Earth was thought to be stationary. There were theories that supported this idea, and the data corresponded well enough for them to accept it as truth. Later on, a better theory came along which we use now. Who knows what new data and innovative theories will reveal?
"if only i had known i would have been a locksmith." -albert einstein
...this has already happened. [missing you, Douglas]
We as a human race have assembled a sizable amount knowledge regarding the cosmos, and would like to preserve that information for our "static" friends of the future. My question is, what media is the best for storing this information? I'm most familiar with tape backup, burnable dvd's, and network access storage units, but I fear they will not last required 100 billion years! Any thoughts?
I've seen a lot of mention about collecting and preserving information for the potential future generations, but has anyone considered what is already lost to us?
Is it possible that there is information which has already vanished from our ability to perceive it?
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
It is factored in as the Universe is designed to allow us in this window for humans to investigate. I may be mischaracterizing the argument, but the overall point remains that this factor is used in cosmology-based ID arguments.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Okay, but where's my @#&%! flying car?
Table-ized A.I.
Science is a useful way to pursue truth, but it is not the only way. I think people need to see that, and this is a good example of how that is true.
You buffoon. Take your ignorance and creationist agenda and dry up. Is there anything that you maroons can't turn to your own cult recruitment tactics? You are wrong in so many ways its almost impossible to figure out where to start correcting you, and definitely not worth the bother.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.