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We live in but a bright second, yet are determined to fill it with darkness unending.
and what comes after that guys
No, really, this is a fantastic question we should all ask more.
Because on the outside, in terms of space and the physical universe, it will undergo phase transitions, it will experience a long, slow cooling into rarified energy… but those terms “long” and “rarified” are just from our human reference frame. Roger Penrose’s work demonstrated how even a vast, infinite expanding space with tiny particles zooming through it, from other reference frames behaves exactly like the big bang. IE: as the universe cools and expands, it’s still infinitely dense and exploding outward from a different perspective of time and space. It’s perpetual.
That’s one thing. The other thing is this… time passing is meaningless if nobody is there to observe it. You will be dead for an infinite amount of time, you won’t notice a moment of it. But every passing moment you’re dead, the universe is rolling dice. It’s always rolling dice.
Eventually, even if it takes so incredibly long that we don’t have numbers to express it (we actually do) then something is bound to happen again. Eventually these “somethings” will be just right to create a kind of universe, complex information systems, and maybe even a consciousness that can experience it.
It sounds kind of fantastic and overly fanciful, but I am basing this on the evidence that it happened at least once before that we know of.
This is the main reason why, if you come across a genie in a lamp, you should probably not wish for immortality. You’re gonna be hellafuckin bored for a loooooooong time.
If you get the chance, ask for omnipotence or to become conscious energy systems or something. You can still choose to experience being a human and having all these experiences, but you will never be stuck, you will never get bored or feel anything related to being mortal if you don’t want.
You could even choose to live a whole lifetime. Maybe billions of lifetimes, each one feeling totally and completely indistinguishable from reality, because it would be reality.
You could be experiencing that right now.
I don’t want to imagine the level of procrastination I would have if I were immortal.
Why? Are you bored now? If so, why is it a problem? If not, then what’s the problem?
Spending Eternity either crushed to a point in the heart of black hole or drifting thru the darkness of space all alone with nothing to do or even anything to look at.
There’s a bit to go yet before we get there. Can I have a few hundred years more first?
I would wish for a life that ends when I want it to. Like the numenoreans had in LoTR
Just one trillion years will do
Ideally our species survives and manages to send ships away from Earth well before that or you’re going to get a really warm summer eventually, followed by sitting on a charred ball of barren, airless rock for the majority of those trillion years.
From what I have read on the internet so far, it’s probably best to not wish for anything at all. Just throw it in the deepest ocean to do us all a favour.
Fuck that, I will mess with shit.
“I want all humans to be able to change sex, race or species at will.”
“Give every human being the ability to experience what someone else has experienced by pressing a small button on the top of our heads.”
“Make volcanoes erupt food. Just endless, nutritious food for everyone.”
“Babies are hatched from eggs. I dunno man, seems like it would be silly.”
“No more mosquitoes. Replace them with tiny little airplanes that sometimes circle around you and you have to swat them down like king kong.”
I suppose you could wish for all genies to be instantly annihilated. Maybe toss the GOP in there for good measure.
“Your wish shall be granted.”
genie destroys the universe
“Eh, worth it.”
What about extreme longevity though
Seriously, even halfway through my expected lifespan and I’m already seeing a point where I’ll be ready to get off the ride. Not in terms of self-harm or depression, but just generally as the decades go on it gets less and less enjoyable in a broad sense.
Our brains absorb too much information and memories than our minds were meant to handle. Our emotions become an annoying liability. Our memories reveal themselves to be these tenuous and bizarre amalgamations of experiences and imagination and cannot be trusted, and maybe most annoying of all is seeing people making the same mistakes around you all the time, and tuning you out for being “old” more and more, determined to fall into the same holes and traps that could be easily avoided, but dragging all of society with them over and over. It takes away a lot of the magic of seeing the future.
Even all that would be something manageable, if I had a loooong life I would probably escape from everyone and just read in the woods or something. But holy shit it has to be alongside physical health because by far the worst, worst, worst thing about getting old is the aches and pains and minor irritations that turn into crippling infections, unhealed strains, and degrading senses.
I am quite positive that something happens after you’re dead for an infinity amount of time, no idea what, but it happened before so it stands to reason it may again, and even the slimmest chances become 100% assured after an infinite amount of time.
Not sure how accurate this is, but pretty cool video https://youtu.be/uD4izuDMUQA
Wont there also be balls of iron-56 just chilling?
Oh shit that’s true
maybe
Good to know that. I am sometimes just thinking that we lived in a bright second. And are now staring into darkness.
The last stars will burn out in 120 trillion years
We think. We still haven’t solved things like the dark matter/energy problem. The answer to that alone could drastically change what we estimate will happen in the distant future.
I mean, have you considered that the expansion of the universe generates or increases the total energy in the universe?
As stars move apart, they gain both potential energy with respect to other stars, because greater distance from gravity sources means greater potential energy, but they also gain kinetic energy as they accelerate away from other objects. So, their mechanical energy (potential + kinetic energy) increases over time. Maybe somebody could build a clever machine out of this to harvest that energy?
You should look up Penrose’s work in conformal cyclic cosmology.
The short version is this: as the rarified universe becomes massless particles flying in all directions as space expands, it is basically the exact same conditions as the big bang. IE, when the universe fizzles out, from a different reference frame it’s still an infinite field of energy expanding out faster and faster.
Just cross out the “distance” part of interactions between particles, without humans or anything with mass really to observe or interact with anything, the relationships between photons are all that matters, and from that perspective it will be the same as the big-bang state. All that’s important to look at is the relationships between these particles, the angles between them and probability of them interacting with each other.
IIRC, the current theory is that stars do not move apart, but that space itself expands, which generates the impression that they move apart.
Stuff only burns for so long. We might learn more about the geometry of space and that there is more out there at greater distances where maybe even other Big bangs are possible but there is a certain maximum amount of time that a star can exist.
Over the time scales of the life of a proton the maximum variability in the amount of time a star can burn is a rounding error against the scale of numbers needed to express the amount of time it takes for hawking radiation to reduce black holes to ultra long wavelengths of infrared radiation.
Yes, but we don’t have proof that universe can’t generate new matter. For all we know there is a mechanism in universe not yet observed that can create new matter out of little vacuum and more stars will keep forming.
So technically all we can say is, it’s likely that stars will die out in 1000 trillion years.
Yes, but we don’t have proof that universe can’t generate new matter.
True… we also don’t have proof there isn’t a tea pot orbiting our Sun since it’s creation, either.
However, there’s also a complete lack of evidence of it.
You cannot prove a negative. The evidence says no new matter can be created. No evidence that new matter gets created. Therefore, we work on the model of no new matter creation.
On these scales, the accuracy of our observations should reduce our confidence though. It doesn’t make sense to confidently say that, in 200 trillion years there will be no stars, because our observations of the rate of new matter creation (approximately zero) have a margin of error which allows for there to still be some
Until evidence shows otherwise, new matter being created doesnt fit our observations.
Go prove that wrong! Win yourself a Nobel prize in physics! That’s what science is about!
I do also want to point out that stuff like “The conservation of energy” law, in other words, that energy cannot be created or destroyed, does not hold for our universe with our current models. An expanding universe violates the time-translation symmetry
This is our current models. This is what our current physics says. And we know it’s incomplete.
When it comes to scientific predictions, you always, always, need the caveat, “under our current model of”.
Space itself expanding doesnt, however…
New matter being created with extremely low probability fits perfectly with our observations.
A teapot created with out solar system orbiting the sun fits our models, with an extremely low probability.
However, we dont work on that assumption being true.
But in this case, this “theory” has a precedent. This energy and matter we have now must have come from somewhere. Whatever your personal belief on the matter is, what’s to say that event can’t happen again? If a god created the universe, then surely he can pump some more into it.
Matter and energy can be converted. So, its possible it was never created, it just always was.
That’s something I’ll never be able to understand. Something having no beginning. Just like I’ll never be able to understand a moment before the big bang, or at the moment of the singularity, where time did could not exist. If there’s no time, how can anything, like the big bang, happen? Unfortunately the singularity is something we know nothing about whatsoever, and probably will never know.
So if all the existing matter came from the big Bang, is it possible to condense it all back into one place?
pretty sure that is the big crunch hypothesis
Sure! Big crunch is a possibility! Crunch or heat death, all matters on how much matter is in the universe.
Google “big crunch hypothesis”
like how we thought black holes were ever-growing inescapable masses and then we learned about hawking radiation.
We also haven’t tried every possible configuration of atoms to see if anything creates a portal to an infinite energy dimension or a perpetual motion machine or something we can use to make our own stars
Infinite energy is cheating. Same with travelling backwards in time.
My intuition tells me the universe doesn’t allow cheaters.
But then I’m just an evolved bag of water cells clinging onto a clump of rock so what the fuck do I know?
Time travel is allowed for under our current models. Or rather, time travel doesn’t affect most parts of the current models, so it’s not cheating.
We can only time travel to the future or i am wrong?
Currently yes, but there’s nothing inherent in there that’s says there’s no way for us to move backwards
I once reas a theory abou you needing to go faster than the speed of light which is not possible theorically
PS: i am not a scientist i don’t know much, only some basic shit i learned for curiosity
Yeah for all we know stars are black hole poop
Nah, that’s the heavier elements.
wait, i thought the heavier elements were star poop, and black holes poop either electrons or positrons i can’t remember.
Only up to iron is star poop. Anything heavier tends to be created by novae of various sizes. Technically nothing comes from the black hole, but many of the very heavy elements are birthed along side black holes.
Gravity and time come from every black hole. Neither of those are “things” in the sense that they aren’t matter. So don’t think I’m saying that you are any kind of wrong. Perhaps “thing” might be to vague to be technically accurate, though.
Everyone here seems oblique in a vision of nothing in perspective, though. Come on, where do you think a big bang came from?
There’s a cap limit to the size of a black hole because it will pop. Moreover, “The” is rather an inappropriate reference to a big bang. You might say “our” but infinity doesn’t mean what you think it means. Not due to any “limit” but due to math through adjacent dimensions you’re only just start to deduce the “obvious” nature of and think to look at. “How” is a whole other Giggle Maestro.
If you need to understand how many dimensions there are…then you will never stop looking. Infinity is way more than we can but get a notion of.
Want to live forever? Tough. Cos even if you could stop your body from growing old and dying, the planet is going to get too warm and nothing will be able to live on it. Then the sun will expand and destroy the planet. But even if you could leave the planet, theres no where close by to get too that wont have the same problems later on. But even if you could get to another solar system, same thing happens again. But then eventually the universe runs out of hydrogen and its fucked. Or the universe gets spread too thin, and its fucked. Or some fucking quantum field takes a shit, and creates a bubble of true vacuum that expands at the speed of light and everything’s fucked.
Im fucked, youre fucked, the earth is fucked, the solar system is fucked, the galaxy is fucked, the local cluster is fucked, its all just fucked. One way or another. At some point nothing exists except an endless absence of anything. Not even nothing will exist…
And people say there are no good arguments for weekly drug fuelled sex orgies…
This always blows my mind to think that we are here and we are experiencing this life and in the grand scheme of things its so fleeting, but that it all came from somewhere and its all going to die eventually. Could it really be true that there will just be nothing for eternity after this? Or are we not just a random chance in a previous eternity. Can we ever really know or is it all just our best guess?
Its humbling but also makes me feel even more like life is important and should be taken seriously.
You know, I often find myself coming at from the other direction. Trying not to take life too seriously, because after all in the end, nothing really matters. It matter now, of course. You and I sharing a conversation, matters. Well, as much as a conversion on a social media platform can without one or both of us showing our arseholes. But in the end, the very end, when theres no one left for us to have influenced. We… do that blade runner thing in the rain.
When I was a boy I used to stay at my grandmothers a lot. And it was there that I had my first taste of existential dread. She had this painting of a ship, an old schooner or something(I dont actually know the names of types of ships, so we’ll just go with that). It was this ship and it was in the middle of the ocean at night and riding the waves of a storm. And for whatever reason I saw, not only myself in this image, but also the world as a whole. I couldnt really understand what my brain was telling me, but it freaked me out. Seeing this ship in this framed moment of being alone in an endless nothing, and battered by elements with no hope or land in sight. And if the ship sank, no one would ever know it was ever there. It would be lost to time. Our world is that ship. Its alone in the dark, and surrounded on all sides by terrors both known and unknown. And at any moment, it could be dragged down to the depths and never seen again and all that we ever were or ever could be would be lost.
When got a bit older, and I found myself plagued by thoughts of embarrassment, as teenagers at want to do, I would remember that ship. And whatever it was that I wanted to do, I would do because as much as being in the storm terrified me, not steering into it and fighting for every moment would terrify me more. One day I will be at the bottom of that abyss, but right before that, Ill be on a bed. Ill be surrounded by family or I wont, and it will just be a loan nurse whose is tired of constantly fixing my pillows and hearing stories of when I was young, and you didnt need sun block factor 5000. And it will be that quiet moment that regret will get deafeningly loud. And while regret is just unavoidable, the absolute last thing I want to hear myself say is “I wish I had said something.”. Ill have a million “I wish I hadnt done that.”, and they will all be valid. But at least Ill know that it was the wrong thing, instead of always wondering what could have been. I think that if I took life more seriously, I might not have done anywhere near the amount of things that I did. And while they werent all winners, they were all brilliant moments of life. And as cringe as it can some times be to look back, it was always fun. Although, I probably could have done without seeing a middle aged man jumping out of a wardrobe in crotchless batman outfit… Id say never go home with strange older women in Brighton, but that would really undercut everything else I just said lol.
Life really is terrifying. Which is why you really just have to shit yourself and jump in to get most out of it.
That was a great read and an interesting take. (You should write, if you don’t already, it was very engaging)
To be fair i guess i don’t take life too seriously because i know that ultimately none of it matters, but equally this short time i get to spend here is my opportunity to experience as much as possible and i don’t want to miss any of it so i have to take my life seriously and the lives of those my actions impact. Feeling anger and happiness, fear and love, pain and pleasure are all things to be taken seriously because they are all part of the ride.
If i relax too much i will miss out. It may not matter ultimately but right now in this moment it does. So i should make the most of it. But remember to be able to let go of my grudges, and enjoy the ride. And try to pass that on to others. Remind those that are so wound and tangled up that they can just let go and things will get better.
For me the meaning of life is just to live it and feel as much as possible.
We can’t truly know, our math still aims to several couple of extra physical dimensions and we have no other proof of that, our quantum physics show a glimpse of infinite universes and have no way of visiting them, probably ever.
We will die and the universe will continue its course like we never where here to begin with, since a repeat for any other lifeforms past, present and future.
Slaanesh endorsed this message.
She’s right, actually
I had to google that lol.
Wait I’ve heard of the vacuum one but never understood it. Do you have a link (or the name of the doomsday theory) so I can read?
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/universe-false-vacuum
Long read, but it should have the answers for all your questions. Have fun! lol.
We’re doing a pretty bang up job of making that one second as stupid and painful as possible.
One second of light illuminating a torture chamber
There are four lights.
Yet all this energy and electromagnetic phenomena
from our very limited vantage point and experiments
feels like it bathes everything as it decays gradually
in slow motion, one rung at a time, towards entropy,
zooming down an exponential thermodynamic curve
that aims and trends towards zero, beyond our view,
beyond the horizon, touching infinity itself.
And here’s the craziest part: the space itself where
this is all taking place, is accelerating its’ expansion.Like living in a slow motion explosion on a spec of dust
Tangentially related great sci-fi short story: “The Last Question” by Isaac Asimov: https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html
I feel like reading this story is an internet nerd Rite of Passage. It had a huge impact on me when I read it as a teenager and I think about it a lot.
Thanks for that. I’ve read it before, long ago, but completely forgot about it. Still a great story.
Probably my favorite short story. This is another one of my favorites, definitely more obscure:
Honestly, this factoid is the closest thing to a real Total Perspective Vortex that I’ve ever felt.
What’s that phenomenon that describes noticing things more after you become aware of them because I’m seeing a lot more Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy references than I remember now that I’ve started reading it
Thus began the Age of Fire. But soon the flames will fade and only Dark will remain.
every soul has its dark
Just like every Knight praise the sun.
If only I could be so grossly incandescent!
Unless that Knight is onion flavored, they just die :(
Unless, of course, that onion knight has a lot of experience in other professions, in which case they can easily punch gods to death.
I just had a moment of what is everything
I don’t know how to explain it but from nothing to something to nothing again but no why
Its the whole “why is there anything at all” thing for me. Like why is there any energy to have made all of this. Couldn’t there just have never been anything at all? Nothing for anyone to experience. Its so hard to perceive and think about but its absolutely fascinating.
If the universe wouldn’t exist, you couldn’t ask yourself that question. So, by wondering “why is there anything at all” you have already answered the question: because otherwise you couldn’t even ask the question.
Im not sure i follow. Or at least im not sure how me being able to ask why is answered by me being able to ask that.
I see that i can ask it because the universe exists but i dont think that covers why.
it’s a play with conditional probability:
By asking the question (of whether the universe exists), that is already reason enough to know the answer. As such, you could say that asking the question is causal to knowing the answer. And the answer is that the universe exists.
So, asking questions causes the universe to exist, in some sense.
Maybe I’m just not smart enough to understand.
What you are saying certainly answers that the universe does exist (or at least we perceive it to) but how does that answer the why? If i can ask the question then the universe does exist. Great. But why?
why has two different meanings. You can ask “why did something happen” and expect a causal explanation, i.e. event B happened because event A happened earlier, or you can ask it like “why is this happening”, like “what is the purpose in it”. does that make sense to you?
Yes, but neither is what you are answering. Or i just don’t get how that answers it.
You are telling me this answers the question “does the universe exist” but i am asking why there is anything there in the first place so that the universe can exist. Why is there a medium for the fabric of space and time to exist within. There could have just been nothing.
I understand that there is. And we are here. But thats not my question and i don’t think your answering that question.
The ‘why’ is us.
Without consciousness in the universe, there might as well not be a universe.
Typically something a consciousness would say.
The cosmos can’t ponder itself so excuse us for being self centered lol
I’ve heard a funny story somewhere that god created the humans sothat they are worshipped. Because if nobody believes in them, they might as well not exist.
We are the cosmos pondering itself.
Carl Sagan said it more or this way and he was right.
It’s a cool axiom though. I mean if there’s nothing conscious to know the universe exists, like, so what? A universe needs life to matter to that life. Intrinsic mattering makes no sense. Things have to matter to other things that have the capacity to want or need. But without consciousness, those things might as well be like calculations in a computer.
to matter Why should it?
to that life Tautology
if a tree falls in yhe forest and no one is around to hear, does it make a sound?
Nope, only matters if we hear it.
Indeed. But it’s an axiom, not a tautology.
Not having consciousness might be the best thing that could happen to a universe. Just everything existing, without desire or suffering.
With a universe that peaceful, there might as well not be us.
Not having consciousness might be the best thing that could happen to a universe. Just everything existing, without desire or suffering.
With a universe that peaceful, there might as well not be us.
actually that’s precisely what buddhism is all about. there is no “i” in it all, the universe is a river of colors, flowing, transforming, but it is because we cling to the world that we create the illusion of an “i” ourselves.
There’s a cool video about this by exurb1a, i think it’s this one (but could also be another video, this dude made a lot of great videos.)
What would be the point of a universe if there was nothing experiencing it?
Who or what is it “best” for?
What is the “point” of this universe?
Us. Conscious creatures humans or otherwise. We are the genesis of “point”.
By analogy, what’s the point of a sun, or a planet, being a thing? It just is, right? A mechanism of nature.
Maybe we are do, but it’s undeniable that we experience reality. Experience is the only thing they can have a point, by definition. This is simply axiomatic.
There is no knowing a universe without knowers, so whether something just is, absent is, is a nonsense question. Sense to whom, after all?
Maybe we are do, but it’s undeniable tjsybwe experience reality.
I’m sticking that as text over an image of Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
Haha, that we, but same difference.
Why does the universe need to be known?
What makes ‘us’ so special that the worth of a whole universe is determined by our existence, inspite of the brevity of human history? Written history has only been around for 5,000. The oldest homo sapiens has only been around for 300,000 years. Was the universe insignificant for the rest of its 13,799,700,000 years?
It doesn’t. But “needing” itself is an undefined term without consciousness - definition itself is a product of conscious experience.
The point is that there is no fact of a universe existing without something that can know facts. It’s necessarily tautological, after all we cannot know not existing.
Were we not, the universe could not be as we know it. Whether or not it exists at all without us cannot matter, because mattering itself cannot be defined without a definer, nor can existence itself be verified without a verifier.
That which “just is” could be absolutely anything at any time.
In other words, Maybe the big bang happened some 13.8 billion years ago and over all this time events transpired until the first consciousnesses came online. Suddenly the universe knows being. Then one day you come online, somewhere around the age of 5 or 6.
Or… That is just what it looks like to you and in reality someone preprogrammed the simulation and switched it on and you came into existence at the moment of your oldest memory. All that history is true only in the sense that it’s what the simulation shows you. But 13.8 billion years never really happened.
That’s basically how it is, and it doesn’t need to be an external simulation. Those 13.8 billion years had nothing in them to experience, to remember, or to document concepts like duration, and years are a relational measurement we invented.
Well if its just backhoes life will evolve to see infrared/sonar
And dig plenty of holes
It’s just backhoes all the way down
One minor problem is that life as we know it is supported by the continuous input of energy from a nearby star. Without it, no photosynthesis, and nearly all primary energy production in Earth life comes from that.
The slightly bigger problem is that by the time there are only black holes, there are no planets. Because, you know, there’s only black holes. So nothing outside of black holes for life to be on, and the vacuum of space isn’t really the most conducive to life or interaction of any kind.
Entropy is the engine that sustains life.
