Katie Mack: 'Knowing how the universe will end is freeing'
Astrophysicist Katie Mack has been researching The End of Everything.
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Knowing how the universe will end is freeing
- Thread starter Forerunner
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If the universe ends suddenly would it be in an instant? We're seeing the past in the stars, right?
How sad would it be that it's a reverse theory of us being the first advancing civilization and we are just the last one left before the universe dies?
Not sure about the first part but you're correct about the second.
It's a similar feeling to pondering what non-existence is. Not just your own post-life non-existence, but what if the universe didn't exist in the first place? Think about it enough and you can feel the void.
Yeah I looked it up once and Im pretty sure you would see some crazy stuff for eons before it all ended.
Yup. And even the idea that non-existence might not be permanent fucks me up. Where is all of this going?
Also like the article says most probable thing will be that the universe's heat just fades, atoms eventually wont be able to hold together and be too weak, collapse and then maybe we then get another Big Bang billions of years later and everything resets.
Cool thing is if we can live as a civilzation till this moment, we prob will be advanced enough to avoid this fate and move between universes if multiple universes exist. We are talking an incredibly long time till this happens, we are talking 100 duodecillion years
Cool thing is if we can live as a civilzation till this moment, we prob will be advanced enough to avoid this fate and move between universes if multiple universes exist. We are talking an incredibly long time till this happens, we are talking 100 duodecillion years
I don't think this is the first time either, we could of run through this universal game multiple times for all we know, and the fact the end doesn't really mean the end is crazy. In large enough scale, this reality is infinite. Just imagine if our race eventually pushes further out in the universe to discover neighboring universes.
Another cool thought is that scenario from the cosmos. Where we could very well be in a black hole, and black hole could of started a big bang which was in another black hole, kind of like stacking dolls. Astrophysics is just so cool
I think I remember reading there is no way around this fate. No information can survive the heat death.
nothing in this universe can, but what if we can travel beyond it?
This is not what heat death is though. as I understand it, it is the literal permanent end to everything - matter and energy, and life of course long long before. No second go at it. Existence had one shot. It's a fairly dark chasm into which to gaze.
Imagining it crunching to the point where it was before the big bang to bang again kind of feels comforting.
The space between planets is so vast that the expanding space between stars becomes unfathomingly meaningless to me.
i think Big Crunch is the less likely scenario though given everything is accelerating away from everything else.
yes. isnt multiverse theory still controversial though?
"Complete nothingness, devoid of light, and even the passage of time has halted. This is how the world ends. A world which has reached the end of time. People may struggle all they like, but the outcome will not change. Surely even you understand this. Hope and possibility are nothing but fleeting dreams glimpsed at the doorstep of this nothingness. Illusions that offer no comfort. They lead people astray and create meaningless conflict."
here's a bit of a bold statement: I believe virtually any thing the universe has to offer in terms of human experiences could be experienced within some small fraction of the milky way. Including alien life and epic interstellar adventure. Traveling to the next galaxy might seem interesting, until you reach intergalactic space and realize that there are trillions of galaxies out there. Where do you even go? But more importantly what of interest could you find there? It's just another galaxy with 150 billion stars, just like the one you came from.
One of the defining characteristics of the universe is that it is actually very uniform. Going to another galaxy won't really change anything.
I realized this when I first played Space Engine(which is a physically modeled procedural universe simulation) in VR. Something about the visceral experience of seeing it in real VR 3D changed my perspective. I flew out of the milky way and I was excited to leave but then my digital eyes adjusted to the exposure and I saw that there were even more tiny lights in the sky than before. Every single one of them a galaxy with billions of stars. Going to anyone of them and expecting something different would be like picking a random grain of sand on the beach and expecting it to be meaningfully different from the rest. It all seemed very pointless to me.
If the beyond is just another continuation of human existence then that's also like finding another grain of sand on the beach.
I think the issue is rather that the multiverse doesn't imply that you can travel between universes. You are stuck where you are.
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We don't 'know' the universe will end. Heat death and whatever else are theories. There's no way we'll ever know something like this with certainty.
Or consider it this way, there can't really be an 'end' to everything. If the universe ends, there can't be nothing because it would just reduce everything to one thing. The lack of everything still leaves something because that lack becomes something - nothingness can't truly happen.
Or consider it this way, there can't really be an 'end' to everything. If the universe ends, there can't be nothing because it would just reduce everything to one thing. The lack of everything still leaves something because that lack becomes something - nothingness can't truly happen.
By far the best produced, narrated, and edited video in YouTube. Can't recommend this enough to everyone.
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Thanks for sharing this. Really humbling to consider the universe and life at these extreme time scales.
We're seeing the past in the stars because it takes time for their light to reach us.
Whether a "sudden" end to the universe would be in an instant depends on how sudden the "sudden" is.
The vacuum decay phenomena would potentially give zero advance warning, since the vacuum decay could basically travel at the speed of light. The event itself could be moving toward us just as rapidly as information about the event is moving toward us. In this scenario, you'd basically instantly stop existing, and there would be no warning.
It's a harrowing thought! But then, a drunk driver can also inflict sudden unexpected death upon you, and the likelihood of something like this happening is astronomically less negligible. And this applies to all kinds of other earthly phenomena. The reality is that human beings aren't invincible and there are all kinds of things outside of our control.
This is amazing. I'd seen it in my recommended videos, but put off watching it until now. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for posting this! I can not express how much I loved this video!
OKAY OKAY HEAR ME OUT. I HAVE ZERO QUALIFICATIONS ON THE MATTER BUT HERE GOES.....
what if eventually the ever expanding "dead" universe with dark matter expands soooooooooooooooooooooo much that its "edge" collides with another ever expanding "dead" universe both accelerating at speeds so high then shit happens cuz dark matter n shit......what if tho
Reading this threading is making me feel the dread of my own existence. Living inside a black hole is a... terrifying thought for no particular reason.
I'm mainly just afraid of death.
I'm mainly just afraid of death.
That's a great way to explain it. When I'm thinking about it I always hit this weird spot where like I'm physically repulsed from thinking on it anymore.
I can't see it that way. Whether you lived up to some kind of expectation won't matter when you're dead because well, you're not afforded hindsight.
Maybe if someone is considering the entire universe, but if you're just factoring the Earth? Not at all. Not only do we have arsenals controlled by unstable people that could decimate the entire planet (and escalating by the day worldwide), do we have a plan in place to stop the next huge meteor that might hit too? Or is our hubris so high that we assume that we'll have "years" of advanced warning to come up with a solution as needed?
Right. There's no one left to view any potential legacy.
The whole of that timelapse is absolutely stunning. It manages to be so compelling despite the scale of it all being so impossible to fathom.
That one part in particular, when our sun dies, is like the first really inconceivable event for us, living as we do now, and those passing "moments" of silence - watching time tick by in the billions of years to follow - is utterly profound.
And that's just the first 3 minutes of the video...
That one part in particular, when our sun dies, is like the first really inconceivable event for us, living as we do now, and those passing "moments" of silence - watching time tick by in the billions of years to follow - is utterly profound.
And that's just the first 3 minutes of the video...
We'll either have gone extinct or evolved into something far beyond what we are today long before the sun goes kaput.
For me the big crunch makes the most sense. If the universe collapsed in on itself, it might trigger a second big bang and start expanding again. If expansion and collapse of the universe is a periodic process, you can explain why universal constants are so perfect without needing a multiverse theory, as well as the origin of the big bang itself.
Hmm for me it's different I guess. It's all internal expectations for myself, almost like having a bucket list. On my death bed, I want to look back and be glad that I was alive during the special moments that I've had. Being dead is inevitable so it makes me not take life for granted so much?
Instant in the sense you could potentially have no warning, sure, if whatever mechanism causes it is transmitted at light speed you wouldn't be able to see it coming.
It wouldn't be instant over the whole universe though, it would take at least 93 billion years , which is the size (93 billion light years) of the observable universe for us from wherever the process starts.
A lot of people don't get to have the cliche "death bed" self reflection moment. Either they die suddenly, in pain, or they're old and their mind is going on them and they're not remembering anything right.
Has anyone here been ridiculously afraid of death and found a way to cope with the thought? I legitimately find the thought of myself dying to be the scariest thing ever, it gives me anxiety just to read this thread. The thought of me one day being in a hospital bed knowing it's almost my time just sends a cold pain through me. I truly believe I would choose to live forever if it were possible.
It's 5am and I'm up after another night of not being able to sleep I don't need this shit man.
As a subscriber to the closed looped universe theory, knowing (or rather, believing) how the universe will end only to restart again in one of an infinite number of possibilities renders "living" kind of pointless. I actively keep myself plugged in to the arbitrary value of society because doing otherwise would allow the underlying myopia to sink in.
On the "bright" side, I'll exist again someday in the future. Don't know how many revolutions it will take to get there, or whether my existence will be in the exact timeline as this one, but another version of me will be back.
On the "bright" side, I'll exist again someday in the future. Don't know how many revolutions it will take to get there, or whether my existence will be in the exact timeline as this one, but another version of me will be back.
Yeah, but restarting requires each loop to happen the exact same each time. As someone who was an accident, I don't like those odds. It also require some people to be doomed to repeat very miserable lives.
Oh I know - there is a very real possibility myself and none of my siblings would exist at all in other iterations of this universe if my mother chooses to accept and pursue her repressed lesbian sexuality. Or, in another sense, if my mom chooses to marry the fiance she had at the time instead of my dad.
And that's just examining the fundamental factors which led about to our existence even occurring, let alone other factors pre and post-birth which have no doubt influenced the outcomes of our lives. Essentially there are infinite incarnates of this universe, a percentage of which share possibilities and events despite differences in the timeline, and another percentage where we don't exist at all. We just happen to be living in one version of it, and once we expire we'll have no recollection of previous cycles other than the temporal deja Vu indicating of the most oft repeated occurrences across multiple timelines.
