Please, don't go insane now. Of all the apocalypses on this site, the one you?re about to read is probably the most mind-boggling of them all. For what will eternity look like? Think of a place where everything has ceased to exist, where golden parkings pop out of nowhere, Napoleon Bonaparte comes back to life and the Twin Towers resurrect themselves. Still, this incredible place is exactly where we are heading, physicists expect. One googol years. That?s truly staggering. Beyond anything a human can comprehend. First, let?s fast-forward to the not-so-awfully-far future. For the coming billions of years, scientists predict quite a ride. The Sun will explode, the Milky Way will slam into another galaxy. The Cosmos might collapse, or get torn apart -- scientists can?t seem to decide yet which is more likely. And even if the Universe doesn?t do that, we?re destined to face a weird and horrible crisis, which involves us spending our lifetime as sleeping robots. The problem is that the Universe gets bigger and cooler. Ever since the Big Bang, it expands, much like an expanding ball of fire after an explosion. Right now, the Universe is still young. It has these cute stars and twinkling galaxies. But in the long run, that will change. Slowly but inevitably, the Universe will empty itself. Big Nothing: Eventually, the Universe will become a dark, sterile place First, the galaxies will fly out of sight, beyond the horizon of what we can possibly see. Next, the stars in our own galaxy will burn out, one after the other. The only thing that will remain, is a dull graveyard of cold planets, dead suns and black holes. In about one hundred trillion years, the Milky Way will go black, astronomers expect. And eventually, even this graveyard decays. One after the other, the dead stars and planets are eaten by black holes, or kicked out of the Milky Way by collisions. Astronomers expect that in one hundred to one thousand billion billion years, our galaxy has dissolved completely. Time goes on. After a while (more trillions of years) something else will kick in. You?ll notice that even the very stuff nature is made of, isn?t stable. A proton, the particle you?ll find in the core of atoms, has an average lifetime of 100 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 years. Wait long enough, and it will suddenly vanish. Poof, gone. The same goes for light particles, the so-called ?photons?. They?re expected to last a few zero?s longer, but in the end, they too will kick the bucket, one after the other. Isn?t that just bizarre? The light will go out, literally. The last thing that survives, are the black holes. But in the end, they too will vanish. They will evaporate in a puff of radiation. So there we are, at our unimaginable one googol years. Finally, the Universe is totally and utterly empty. You won?t see any light or spot any planet -- in fact, you won?t even find the tiniest speck of dust. The Universe has sterilized itself. All there is left, is emptiness, and darkness. Total oblivion. And worst of all: there?s nothing we can do to stop it. We can build fancy machines or futuristic devices all we like -- but in the end, they?ll all get kicked out of existence, when the matter they are made of simply vanishes. So there you have it: infinity. Booooring, we must add. But don?t sob. There?s an upside. As the quadrillions of years pass by, something very odd should happen. In eternity, even the rarest events get a chance to occur. Weird, bizarre phenomena that only happen once in a zillion years or so, become quite normal. For example: the nothingness should yield a few surprises. Already, physicists know that in a vacuum, there are sometimes tiny little energy ?blobs?. Little, random fluctuations of the so-called ?quantum vacuum?. Out of nowhere, tiny particles pop in and out of existence. But theory predicts that on very, VERY rare occasions, the fluctuations should be a bit larger. Out of nowhere, an entire atom might appear! Or hey, the vacuum may even spit out a few of them! Think of it like the static on TV. Wait long enough, and out of the random fuzz, a recognizable image might materialize. Wait REALLY long, and one day a complete episode of The Bold And The Beautiful should accidentally show up! In the vastness of eternity, even things that are almost impossible become real. Like the sudden appearance of, say, a light green buste of Napoleon Bonaparte. In the Universe, this should give some really surprising results. With eternity at hand, the vacuum should begin to yield all kinds of objects. Incoherent lumps of random garbage, most of the time. But on very, very rare occasions, you?ll see other objects popping into existence. The Eiffel tower. A purple camel. A golden parking garage filled with chocolate Cadillacs. Napoleon Bonaparte sitting next to Mike Tyson on top of a stack of comic books. As the googols of years pass by, it?s all there. In the VERY, VERY, VERY long run, the vacuum will even belch up complete planets, and beautiful stars, burning and all. Theoretically the vacuum should even churn out a complete solar system one day, identical to ours, with a planet Earth inhabited by people. "In an infinite amount of time, one day, I will reappear", as physicist Katherine Freese of Michigan University once put it. "An crazy thought, but true." One day the black nothingness should even produce a new Big Bang. Admittedly, we?ll have wait really long for it to happen. Researchers of the University of Chicago once tried to calculate it. And according to their best estimates, it should happen somewhere over the next 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 years. That?s a one with 1056 zero?s. You can count them, if you like. __________________________________________________________________________ based on this theory where things pop in and out of existence, maybe that explains deja vu? btw, this is a question im asking, not part of the article...i cant get this damn italic off of me
damn, that theory is depressing. so the only existence i get to relive is the one i have already lived... weak. i want some bullshit about a spirit world or something cool like that.
That's what I've always suspected. Given infinity, anything can happen. I've been asked more than once how I could believe that the universe was just sparked into existence. If you can understand what "limitless" means, then you should be able to see how impossible things can eventually become possible.
dont we all....its still very spectacular to me i cant understand limitless which is probably why i lean towards believing in a higher being....i just cand understand how everything has been here "forever". i dont think that anyone can help me grasp that concept it only seems logical to me for everything to have a starting point. cant see how the universe has been here for an infinite amount of time. then again, we are only humans and our knowledge DOES have a limit
To understand how something can exist for ever, try counting backwards from infinity. Its called a limited infinity, when something has an end and a beginning. Think of the number Pi, scientists have been trying to calculate its exact number for a long time now, but the decimal just goes on infinitly, but Pi is not an infinit number its is greater then 3.14159265 but definatly not 3.15 its lightly smaller. Hence Pi is a limited infinity. You can imagin a nothingness, like a pot of water. But nothing can remain stable forever, so this nothingness boils up a universe and another and another, until it all cools off again. So each of these bubbles has a beginning and an end from the nothingness' point of view, but from within it is infinit, the closer we get to 0 or the beggining the smaller and smaller the number gets infinitly. If you would like to learn more I think it has alot to do with the term "quanta", please forgive me, Im not sure were all this stuff in my head came from, its what happens when you hit the bong well.
thanks for trying to explain man, this stuff boggles my mind. i've read this post 3 times so far....and i'll probably read it another 10 more times until i can completely understand it lol
I reckon theres alot of truth to this. I've believed for a very long time the the universe has always existed. And that the world as we know it happened because it "had to" happen.
The two positions aren't that different. I hold that the universe is infinite and without cause, you hold that God is infinite without cause. We're both claiming infinity somehow happened, but mine is concrete and supported by evidence and yours is unknowable and speculative. Out of two strange scenarios I choose the less strange one. Adding the mysterious element of God into the mix doesn't make it simpler, it makes it more complicated.
So you don't really care if it's true or not? "somehow" is not evidence. Evidence requires observation and measurement in some manner. Infinity is impossible to measure, only represent in models like two mirrors across from each other, or how ripples form from a center, always requiring a surrounding area to percieve boundaries in the first place. The God concept doesn't make the universe more complicated. It's the lies about the God concept (I know God without any evidence other than testimony-type babble have your read the book type bs) that forces many people to be very apprehensive about believing and complicates things with contradictions. Limited infinity... Where did you hear that? Are you talking about the concept of something being undefined?
yup, a limited infinity. I can already tell your more interested in the political correctness of words and their definitions in a dictionary. Limited Infinity-An infinity that is limited, like Pi, or another undefined number. (my definition, don't know where it came from) If you can't imagine something having a beginning and an end, yet also being infinite, dont try to gain an upper hand in the status quo by makeing me seem uneducated. Trust me you dont need to try and do that, you'll only look like a pompus asshole and deter this conversation from where it was origonally headed, toward advanced thought. I fully admit that I am not formally educated, as that what may be what matters to you. Let me ask you a question. If I told you I only went to High School for 1 and a half years and have never been in college, would you disregard what I say?
thats not the point of this thread man. you are trying to compare believing in a god to not believing in a god which has nothing to do with anything. all i said was i was inclined to believe that there is a higher being, not that i believe that there is one. lets not turn this into one of "those" threads please.
How the heck can an "infinity" be "limited". I know such terms exist in mathematics but we're not talking about number theory. That's just a misuse of the term as far as I'm concerned. Infinite/y either describes something that is eternal and limitless, in this sense, no beginning, no end, or it doesn't. Twisting the word to mean something else should require a different descriptive word.
You mentioned being "inclined to believe" that something happened and I commented on that. If we're talking about how something started and someone suggests a cause, are we not to talk about that, the cause? Wouldn't part of the conversation naturally lend itself toward ascertaining whether we should or shouldn't believe that that cause was the right one in order to get closer to knowing the Actual Truth? How are we to talk about what to believe if we are to avoid talking about belief generally? Perhaps the universe is infinite in every conceivable way (or not) and we'll never find out exactly how it happened. If we come to a question with which we don't have an answer, why appeal to an unknowable answer (a god in this case)? We see science pointing toward the Big Bang, but what besides speculation goes further to say that a conscious deity caused it? Also, I don't understand the difference between being inclined to believe something but also not believing in it. Can I have another example? What is X if "I am inclined to believe in X, yet I don't"? Do we not believe things because we are inclined to believe them? I can't think of things I believe but am not inclined to believe, or things which I do not believe that I am inclined to believe.
yea you're right, sorry about that, but it just came off that you were bashing in believing in a creator and i didnt want this thread to turn into a big argument about that. i am a militant agnostic....this basically means that i do know, and you dont know either. however, i do have sudden shifts of what im inclined to believe over what im not. i dont rule out anything, therefore i dont rule out the fact that there is a God. while i will be inclined to believe that there is a God, i still will admit that i do not know, nor totally believe in it. imo, its impossible for us to comprehend it so the only reasonable thing to do is to soak everything in open mindedly and not be so sure of your feelings/beliefs.
Just pointing out that a higher being must have started somewhere also, so it's no more plausible than anything else. But that's a very interesting article. One question... what has that got to do with deja vu? I don't see the connection.
yea thats true too.... well when it says that the universe spits random things from the past out, i wonder if thats what deja vu is. maybe we feel like we've experienced that moment before because we actually have when the universe did that (this is just theory of course)
Yeah but that doesn't explain how we could half-remember it. Just because the universe spits out something that is pretty much US, doesn't mean we're connected to that at all. It's just random chance
in machine language there is only 0's and 1's. Therefore there is either nothing(0), or there is everything(1).
some day after the universe is dead, within the infinite time afterwards, my body's cells will realign and I will be reborn. IT WILL HAPPEN. I AM IMMORTAL!!!!