Universe Ending Way Sooner Than Thought!...Meh.

Cars run out of petrol, stars run out of fuel and galaxies collapse into black holes. As they do, the universe and everything in it is gradually running down. But how run down is it? Researchers from The Australian National University have found that the universe is 30 times more run down than previously thought.

Science Daily


A recent paper that's been submitted to arXiv claims to show that entropy in the Universe is 30 times higher than we thought. Simply put, entropy is the process where matter and heat is spread out evenly across the expanding universe. It amounts to 'heat death of the universe.' The end of the Universe as we know it...no heat and any light so distant from the next source of light to render it dark.

To paint a simple picture, if we could be here on Earth in that distant future where entropy is accelerating...we'd look into the sky and see total blackness. No sun, no daytime, no moon, no stars.
Typically, it's our sinister friends the super-massive black holes that are causing a lot of the trouble. These black holes are like a fat kid on a week-long camping trip...eating all their food before the week's half-over.....then looking at yours

Egan states, “We considered all contributions to the entropy of the observable universe: stars, star light, the cosmic microwave background. We even made an estimate of the entropy of dark matter.” He adds, “But it’s the entropy of super-massive black holes that dominates the entropy of the universe. When we used the new data on the number and size of super-massive black holes, we found that the entropy of the observable universe is about 30 times larger than previous calculations.” [ScienceAlert.com.au] Dr. Lineweaver compared their results to a car’s gas tank. He states, "It's a bit like looking at your gas gauge and saying `I thought I had half a gas tank, but I only have a quarter of a tank.'”

Universe has less of a future than previously thought.

I'm thinking of Dennis Leary and Bill Hicks with the 'meh' in the title. The universe can have those years...they're right at the end of the life.

Slashdot give the idea a beating...

[edit on 27-1-2010 by Kandinsky]

reply to post by Kandinsky


Even if it were decaying more rapidly we'd still be likely to have billions of years left and honestly who has time to plan that far into the future. Most scientists claim our sun has a few billion years left in and of itself. So will the entropy of these super-massive blackholes cause them to collapse? Aren't blackholes already collapsed? It's all too complex for me...

The scientists name is Egan... so close to being Egon from Ghostbusters

Even if the collapse of the Universe was happening a million times faster than we think it's happening, that revelation is meaningless to us as a species.

Human beings will either go extinct or evolve into many entirely different species that will then go extinct long before the universe ends.

I've never understood Mankind's fascination with the lifespan of the Universe. I mean, it means nothing to us or to our survival. It's never going to impact us. We'll never have to deal with it.

So, why fret over what is, essentially, infinity?

Oh, I know, Michio Kaku will come running out to correct me: "Mathematically speaking, there's NO SUCH THING as infinity."

Thanks, Michio.

Now, left me load Michio's ass into the fastest starship that we can construct today. The fastest one. And let's launch him toward, oh, a fairly close neighboring star, maybe Proxima Centauri, the closest one... His dusty corpse would arrive there in a few thousand years.

What do you say about "infinity" now, Michio?

Practically speaking, not speaking scientific mumbo jumbo, we have no vested interest in knowing the fate of the Universe. It's useless information. It's contemplating infinity.

— Doc Velocity

Who cares about billion year timelines, I dont think people realise how huge and insignificant that is to humans existance, well probably be wiped 500,000 over before anything drastic happens to the universe.

Just remember..

New science is not always going to be at your convienence.
We are not that important.
We are dust.
We are mucus.
We are without control.
We are not Gods.
We Dont have to understand.
Know what I mean?

reply to post by Titen-Sxull


reply to post by Doc Velocity


Thanks for the replies

I disagree that the end of the Universe is meaningless to us. I guess the term 'meaningless' is wholly subjective in this and other contexts? It's profound to contemplate that at some point every memory and experience of life on Earth will come to nothing. No memorials, no records...zero. Maybe that renders our contribution to the history of the Universe 'meaningless?' Quite possibly! This is why the slow run down of our time and space is interesting to so many. It's paradoxical that it can be both full and devoid of meaning at the same time.

It reminds me of the Blade Runner scene where Rutger Haur talks of his memories and describes all our yesterdays as 'tear drops in the rain.'



The idea of the death of the Universe and entropy is the single thread that runs through my sig story link. It poses it as 'The Last Question.' I'll admit to being both Wow! and Meh...at the same time.

reply to post by Common Good

We Dont have to understand.
Know what I mean?

I do know what you mean. We don't 'have' to, but we 'must.' Wanting to know is the itch that humanity can't scratch. It's the Jack o Lantern that has driven us through history. It's led us into saving road accident victims, premature babies and put little rovers on Mars. It's also cost the lives of millions through wars and the darker excesses of human nature.

It's one hell of an itch.

Originally posted by Kandinsky
reply to post by Titen-Sxull

 

reply to post by Doc Velocity

 

Thanks for the replies

I disagree that the end of the Universe is meaningless to us. I guess the term 'meaningless' is wholly subjective in this and other contexts?

I think what is meaningful is that out of all the 99% of species that have ever existed on Earth and are now extinct, humans may be the first who have a chance to possibly avoid that fate.

I don't think it's a question of IF there will be another planet killer like the one that wiped out the Dinosaurs 65 million years ago, but WHEN. Hopefully by the time it happens, mankind will have colonies on more than one planet so there will be survivors. And if you plan further ahead, maybe before our sun starts to enter its death throes, we will have figured out a way to inhabit another solar system so we might even survive the death of our star.

Regarding the universe ending sooner than thought, they only entered the variables they know about, they didn't enter the variables they don't know about, which makes their model inaccurate. How do I know there are variables they don't know about? Well for one thing, nobody understands dark energy, so until that's understood, I'd say any such model has a gaping hole in it that renders it at best inaccurate and at worst, useless.

The idea that black holes will eventually dominate everything seems to be contradicted by this explanation of Hawking radiation:

imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov...

By emitting Hawking radiation, black holes lose energy and shrink in size as they do so (since from Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 where mass and energy are equivalent). Eventually they will vanish completely, and this process is often referred to as "black hole evaporation." Note that this is a very slow process and only the smallest back holes (many, many orders of magnitude less massive than the sun) will have had time to significantly evaporate over the enter 14 billion year history of the universe.

Or maybe they will for a time until they "evaporate" as described in that explanation? I think the black holes will be in all different stages of formation, evolution, and evaporation just like we see stars in various stages of their life cycles, so I don't think all the life cycles will coincide at the same time.



[edit on 27-1-2010 by Arbitrageur]

reply to post by Arbitrageur
I agree with just about all your points. It underlines the complexities of beginning to try and comprehend what the end of the universe represents. As you point out, we can only present models based on the data we have now. Such data can only be interpreted through existing theories. Acknowledging how our understanding has developed in a few centuries means accepting that we are bound to be mistaken or limited in what we think we know.

Maybe it's a lazy analogy? The absence of 'Junk DNA' in our genome would negate our existence like the absence of errors in science would negate our growth in knowledge. We 'stand on the shoulders of giants' as much as we depend on their failings.

reply to post by Kandinsky


The good old "Big Chill" theory. As far as I am concerned it has as much credence as the "Big Crunch", "Big Rip", or infinite universe theory. I just do not know how much faith i would store into this theory with the very limited information we have on the universe.

Although I will say the "Big Chill" does seem a little more plausible than the others. Even if it is true we still likely have tens upon tens of billions of years left in the universe. By then, humans will either be long gone, masters of the universe/multiverse, or have ascended to some other form of existence that negates an death of the universe.

Thanks for sharing K, S/F...

reply to post by Doc Velocity


Star for Mr. Doc.

If we can agree that black-holes explode then all this consumed energy is then potential energy waiting to be released again in a massive explosion once a certain criteria is met within a black-hole singularity.

Which leads to... the birth and death cycle of an absolute Universe of which beginning and end are merely cycles of something that has always existed in one form or another.

Kind of pointless to worry about it's current death cycle when we will secede to death long before that happens.