Timeline of the far future • Hacker News Board

Re: Timeline of the far future

#241

Post by pc86 » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC

baxtr wrote: post #182

21 wrote: post #8

> The length of the day used for astronomical timekeeping reaches about 86,401 SI seconds. Under the present-day timekeeping system, either a leap second would need to be added to the clock every single day, or else by then, in order to compensate, the length of the day would have had to have been officially lengthened by one SI second. Can you just imagine the amount of legacy code with DAY_SECONDS=86400 out there 5…

Why don’t we just 6 minutes at the end of each year? Seems to be more practical to me

You want December 31st to be 6 minutes longer than December 30th?

Re: Timeline of the far future

#242

Post by pc86 » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 6:53 PM UTC

majos wrote: post #238

majos wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a dude-do-you-ever-think sidenote, this sort of thing keeps me from getting excited about any type of virtual reality that does anything with our brains. How do I know it won't simulate 10 years of torture, then at the end replace that memory with 10 minutes of an edenic golden field, so when I actually unplug all I have is a nice remembered experience that I'd like (incorrectly) to try again?

@Florin_Andrei: Sure, but we have reasonable expectations of how bad things can get and our capacity to learn from them. Alter your perception and memory and those things go out the window, and that's way scarier than normal organic life.

If you can't see the reply button because the comment is too new, click "0 minutes ago" and you can always reply there.

Re: Timeline of the far future

#243

Post by pc86 » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 6:55 PM UTC

TrainedMonkey wrote: post #49

cpburns2009 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels anecdotal rather than an actual calculation.

Assuming that time moves forward, probability of all events that have already happened is 1. Probability of all events that could have happened, but did not 0. There is an interesting parallel that could be made to quantum states collapsing. Given that the question asks about 'current' universe arising spontaneously from vacuum the probability is 1 because that has already happened. The more interesting question, wha…

> Probability of all events that could have happened, but did not 0.

Only if you meant "could have happened, but did not, and now for some reason can no longer happen."

"All events that could have happened, but did not" would reasonably encompass every event with 1 > P > 0, wouldn't it?

Re: Timeline of the far future

#244

Post by majos » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 6:59 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #242

majos wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@Florin_Andrei: Sure, but we have reasonable expectations of how bad things can get and our capacity to learn from them. Alter your perception and memory and those things go out the window, and that's way scarier than normal organic life.

If you can't see the reply button because the comment is too new, click "0 minutes ago" and you can always reply there.

Oops, didn't know that. Thanks.

Re: Timeline of the far future

#245

Post by pc86 » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 6:59 PM UTC

mardoz wrote: post #205

mkempe wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are wide varieties of corals and of their symbionts. To claim that they are all simultaneously going extinct in all seas and microclimates is absurd, and contradicts the evidence of their repeated adaptations to past climate variations over 500 million years as well as ignores the observation of their thriving across countless local seasonal and weather variations.

Straw man, no one claimed that there will be a complete extinction of coral, only that it will be 2 million years for coral to recover to pre-industrial levels.

> we are in fact in the midst of an extinction.

Literally two comments above.

Re: Timeline of the far future

#246

Post by pc86 » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 7:05 PM UTC

OscarCunningham wrote: post #220

mrkstu wrote: post #115

This reminded me of a question I've had knocking around in my head since I've heard of hawking radiation- the prediction is that the black holes slowly evaporate into subatomic particles. However, it seems to me at some point a critical juncture would be passed and the black hole would cease being bound gravitationally and the matter would be released similarly to a supernova or just spontaneously form a neutron star…

The temperature of a black hole decrease as it gets larger. A black hole colder than 2.7K will absorb energy from background radiation faster than it emits Hawking radiation. So it will get larger and cooler. Any black hole warmer than 2.7K will emit energy faster than it absorbs. This means it will get smaller and hotter, leading it to lose energy at an increasing rate until it has lost all its energy and evaporates…

I've always wondered, what would happen if we were able to create a black hole of this small a scale and it didn't evaporate? Something with an EH of a fraction of a millimeter.

Re: Timeline of the far future

#247

Post by TrainedMonkey » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 7:53 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #243

TrainedMonkey wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that time moves forward, probability of all events that have already happened is 1. Probability of all events that could have happened, but did not 0. There is an interesting parallel that could be made to quantum states collapsing. Given that the question asks about 'current' universe arising spontaneously from vacuum the probability is 1 because that has already happened. The more interesting question, wha…

> Probability of all events that could have happened, but did not 0. Only if you meant "could have happened, but did not, and now for some reason can no longer happen." "All events that could have happened, but did not" would reasonably encompass every event with 1 > P > 0, wouldn't it?

What I specifically meant is that to best of our knowledge past is deterministic, but future is not.

Re: Timeline of the far future

#248

Post by mockingbirdy » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 8:03 PM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #211

duckerude wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding of it is that it wouldn't reach zero Kelvin. The heat only becomes uniformly distributed. Everything becomes maximally disorderly. Things move, but all interesting information is gone. But order is probabilistic. It's not physically impossible for order to increase, it's just ridiculously unlikely. If you wait long enough ( really long) it'll probably happen some time. I don't think quantum effects a…

That’s the crazy thing about large numbers like these. Even Entropy’s Heat Death are swallowed up by them. Not only do such events become probable but they become inevitable an endless number of times over a long enough timescale. Infinity kills even Heat Death.

I will start to use this in rock-paper-scissors-infinity.

But first I have to deeply realize that I'm just one out of all possible ones and that I exist infinitely times and also infinitely times where I finally have a beard.

Re: Timeline of the far future

#249

Post by sctb » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 8:22 PM UTC

jimbofisher1 wrote: post #228

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #108

> The red supergiant star Antares will likely have exploded in a supernova. The explosion is expected to be easily visible in daylight. Wow, I'd love to be able to see that. Makes one sad about all the things they'll never get to experience.

Likely to cause the Bible thumpers to go insane, not sure I want to be there when that happens.

We ban accounts that won't comment civilly and substantively.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Timeline of the far future

#250

Post by anonytrary » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 8:32 PM UTC

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #202

anonytrary wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit ironic because you made the exact same mistake they made. Interplanetary colonization only makes sense if humans are even around in 10,000 years. It's possible they will not be -- the speed of light being finite makes interplanetary colonization much less probable. Making any kind of 10,000 year prediction on a population thousands seems myopic.

Interplanetary is not the same thing as interstellar. Interplanetary just means different planets. E.g. after we colonize Mars we will be an interplanetary species. That's also where the divergence will begin. The development and evolutionary characteristics of individuals that grow up in low g will likely quickly begin to create a group of people radically different from anything on Earth. You're making a common mis…

I misspoke, assume I said interstellar.

> You're making a common mistake on the speed of light.

Correcting for my mishap, all I said was that finite c makes interstellar travel much less probable, which isn't wrong. It would take infinite energy for your spaceship to arrive at c as the Lorentz factor blows up.

> if we can, somehow, develop technology to be able to consistently accelerate at just 1g

This is exactly the kind of long-shot assumption you are forced to make because c is finite. I would say that reduces the probability. Plus, once we start talking about billions of years of time-dilation, we aren't really in the 10,000 year scope we set up earlier, so it's not even wrong.