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.
one bright second
Submitted 21 hours ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/4d5f9e46-8f7a-47c0-9d65-5fa3a2e6f1b4.webp
Comments
niktemadur@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 21 hours ago
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.
Afaithfulnihilist@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 hours ago
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 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.
faintwhenfree@lemmus.org 17 hours ago
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.
iloveDigit@sh.itjust.works 17 hours ago
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
Small_Quasar@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
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?
Bennyboybumberchums@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
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…
pyrflie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 hours ago
Slaanesh endorsed this message.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
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?
Bennyboybumberchums@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
bigthink.com/…/universe-false-vacuum
Long read, but it should have the answers for all your questions. Have fun! lol.
But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Like living in a slow motion explosion on a spec of dust
DarkFuture@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
We’re doing a pretty bang up job of making that one second as stupid and painful as possible.
IzzyJ@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
One second of light illuminating a torture chamber
Illogicalbit@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Tangentially related great sci-fi short story: “The Last Question” by Isaac Asimov: users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html
GaMEChld@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Probably my favorite short story. This is another one of my favorites, definitely more obscure:
smuuthbrane@sh.itjust.works 11 hours ago
Thanks for that. I’ve read it before, long ago, but completely forgot about it. Still a great story.
markovs_gun@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
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.
VivianRixia@piefed.social 17 hours ago
Thus began the Age of Fire. But soon the flames will fade and only Dark will remain.
LapGoat@pawb.social 16 hours ago
every soul has its dark
its_kim_love@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 hours ago
Just like every Knight praise the sun.
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 hours ago
Also see Dyson’s Eternal Intelligence:
en.wikipedia.org/…/Dyson's_eternal_intelligence
Basically, if you assume it’s possible to upload our intelligence to a computer and run it, then you can keep the energy going to run it for a very, very long time. Well past the heat death of the rest of the universe. It depends on running things in an on and off state to conserve energy for trillions of years. Subjectively, the people in there wouldn’t notice that and would simply see their active lifespans go for trillions of years. It’s not clear what the limit would actually be.
It’s something like Zeno’s Paradox. You cut things in half each cycle, but never quite get to zero.
emmanuel_car@fedia.io 19 hours ago
I see someone else is a Kurzgesagt fan https://youtu.be/VMm-U2pHrXE
WhyIHateTheInternet@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
I like to watch them when I need a good existential crisis
jballs@sh.itjust.works 17 hours ago
I saw that pop up as a recommendation the other day but forgot to watch it until you posted that. Cool video! Weird how they come up with this crazy shit.
salacious_coaster@infosec.pub 17 hours ago
I cannot express in words just how much I do not want my consciousness to persist, trapped, for trillions of years of darkness. That would be unimaginable hell.
erusuoyera@sh.itjust.works 16 hours ago
with only a finite initial store of energy, only a finite number of thoughts can ever be processed. This “thermal death” of the universe prevents the infinite hibernation and computation trick from working, thus rendering Dyson’s eternal intelligence scenario impossible in a universe with a positive cosmological constant.
My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.
ThatGuy46475@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Eternity would get boring, a few trillion years would give you plenty of time to not miss out on anything life has to offer
puppycat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 hours ago
that explains Pantheon really well
4grams@awful.systems 10 hours ago
Honestly, this factoid is the closest thing to a real Total Perspective Vortex in hat I’ve ever felt.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
coulda said trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion and saved us a little time
affiliate@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
we still have 120 trillion years left. we can spare the time for a few extra words
Zamboni_Driver@lemmy.ca 13 hours ago
No no, it will be over just like a second! Blink for 120 trillion years and you’ll miss it.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
No! We must be absolutely positively as terse and brief as possible. Concision is the watchword, my friends.
Zerush@lemmy.ml 13 hours ago
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 12 hours ago
Yoink
BrokenGlepnir@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Does thinking about the long dark make anyone else feel like they are going to vomit?
IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 20 hours ago
The chances of me living long enough to actually be effected by it are so slim that I’m completely unconcerned about it.
bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 19 hours ago
And if you could live so long it would invalidate basically everything we know of physics. So the long dark wouldn’t actually come.
TexasDrunk@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
I do like how you haven’t ruled it out yet.
toynbee@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
I don’t know, I thought it was pretty fun.
kazerniel@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Nope, I think humanity will be long gone by then, so it doesn’t really matters what happens after that.
Eq0@literature.cafe 19 hours ago
More like head spinning, like when you look at the stars are you loose your reference frame
brbposting@sh.itjust.works 18 hours ago
Why’s that? If humanity presumably nearly couldn’t be around then?
XiELEd@piefed.social 15 hours ago
It makes me feel like all the suffering people inflict for the sake of selfishness jand greed just pointless.
habs@lemmy.sdf.org 12 hours ago
What happens after the 10^106 years of black holes?
humorlessrepost@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
The black holes evaporate eventually.
After that, depends on who you ask. Most physicists would say something like “as close to nothing as possible”. Penrose would say at a certain point when nothing can interact with anything else, distance loses meaning, which makes the universe and a singularity equivalent, so then things restart.
dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works 11 hours ago
Not sure about the “restart” bit.
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 12 hours ago
Nothing really. And since nothing is happening and nothing ever changes time itself becomes meaningless.
markovs_gun@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
From what I understand, the universe would just be in equilibrium. Nothing but cold particles floating around.
polydactyl@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
A recent discovery might suggest that we happen to be in a big void, and that a great amount of the universe is much much denser than where we are or what we have observed. If true, Big Crunch time bby
FilthyShrooms@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
That’s neat, stars are just the sparks after the big bang, and “soon” that energy will be gone. Even with all the bad shit happening, it makes me happy to be alive in this beautifully short window of time in the universe, even if our little dust speck circling a spark is a bit fucked up sometimes
HyonoKo@lemmy.ml 20 hours ago
I think the passing of time, as in waiting, is an experience of the mind. Without a waiting mind, the length of time is just another number out there, like the distance between the edges of the universe. If after the dark finale of this universe there exists another event that spawns a conscious mind, there is no actual waiting happening between this universe bright, starry second and the next one.
whotookkarl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 hours ago
Time can stretch and squish and follow physical rules, if the passage of time is an experience of the mind time itself would remain existent without minds just as real as distance and the passage of distance via movement between objects would remain without minds.
One interesting thing I heard is the DESI data from a telescope observatory in Arizona that was trying to build a more accurate map of the universe identified the dark energy acceleration as slowing. That could mean if the trend continues eventually gravity will overpower dark energy and everything collapses back together again. I don’t think it’s conclusive, but it is evidence maybe heat death isn’t an ending phase.
Sphere@hexbear.net 19 hours ago
kazerniel@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Reminds me of that Kurzgesagt video about Optimistic Nihilism:
“Close your eyes. Count to 1. That’s how long forever feels.”
kkj@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 hours ago
Anthropic Principle moment
MourningDove@lemmy.zip 17 hours ago
Fun fact;
The last Star Wars movie will be made roughly around that same time.
sauerkrautsaul@lemmus.org 16 hours ago
I used to like wait but why until he made a 3 post puff piece about elon musk’s neuralink
theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Black holes aren’t “dark”…
happybadger@hexbear.net 19 hours ago
As existentially bleak as living through climate change is, I’m glad my brain only has to deal with the crisis of watching one planet in one solar system die. The average schmuck in Warhammer 10^10^ will be chasing the last sparks of warmth in a blizzard that will only get worse. The last habitable planet, the last active star, the final energy source they can find that will keep the temperature above 0 K for their grandchildren. They’ll have every beepboop gizmo the universe ever achieves to counter the crisis but there’s nowhere they can go short of making a new one, the same kind of deus ex machina we hope for but representing a new kind of hyper-death instead of just clean energy. Maybe they’ll still be able to grow crops if scientists manage to duplicate physics perfectly in some kind of thing outside of everything within the next 18 months according to the latest IPCC report. Individuals aren’t built to manage whatever psychic damage that causes no matter how much we abstract what it means to exist.
smuuthbrane@sh.itjust.works 20 hours ago
Well then I’m just going to enjoy the absolute fuck out of Hawking radiation and Mr pouty pants can sulk for 10^elebenty eons.
socsa@piefed.social 13 hours ago
This is actually a very good argument for simulation theory, since if some species ever manages to synthesize consciousness beyond natural biology, then the vast majority of all consciousness will exist in black hole entropy farms in the post-star universe, making it almost a statistical certainly that we are one such farm.
arsCynic@lemmy.ml 14 hours ago
Sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
The more you zoom out, the more you realize how insignificant we are. I’ve heard a lot of people realized this when they saw “The Pale Blue Dot” photograph of earth, but I had to have the perspective of time to realize it. We are nothing, not even a spit in the sea.
SleeplessCityLights@lemmy.ca 14 hours ago
Do we know if ä is greater than or less than zero?
mod3@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 hours ago
The universe is just a big big computation, and this is just the seed phase
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
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.
Valmond@lemmy.world 9 minutes ago
What about extreme longevity though
CaptainBlagbird@lemmy.world 53 minutes ago
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.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 6 minutes ago
I suppose you could wish for all genies to be instantly annihilated. Maybe toss the GOP in there for good measure.