The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make • Hacker News Board

Re: The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make

#31

Post by goldenkey » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 3:17 PM UTC

*according to our small little local window of observations of the universe.

The universe is thought to be either infinite or 46 billion light years across. Our passive observations don't give us a whole lot to work with, they just give us a view of 14 billion light years.

It's easy to make interpolation/extrapolations. Harder to know the impact of conscious life, the extent of it, and how anisotropic the universe might really be.

Intelligent life may one day create artificial stars or is already doing so. The evolution of the universe can be highly affected by a Type 5 civilization. Let's not be so certain about these astrophysical phenomena..

The effect of conscious intelligence is so great, we might have to rewrite some of the laws of cosmology. After all, when a human being with a death star can simply change the angle of the beam to destroy one planet instead of another, clearly the impetus is that weakly energetic states (state of the brain) are extremely potent in the evolution of the universe.

Normally we think that the magnitude of energy is what matters. However, when it comes to conscious entities, it is the structure that matters. This potency of structure throws a wrench in just using total energy as a measure of the effect that an object can cause. Brains use hardly any energy and yet cause absurdly strong effects that we still don't know the full extent of.

One peculiarity about quantum mechanics is that even the lowest energy particles still require the universe to compute their paths and wavefunctions. This has commonly been a target of ways to verify if we are living in a simulation - looking for screen door effects in the interference patterns of extremely low energy particles.

One hypothesis was that perhaps the universe attempts to save computation on low energy particles. We did not find any screen door phenomena though. So the current stance is that the universe provides full fidelity wavefunctions to particles independent of the magnitude of their energy. A low energy particle or system can have a wavefunction of seemingly limitless quantum complexity.

Cosmology currently revolves around magnitude of energy, not the butterfly effect or intelligence. Expect this to change as we further our understanding.

Re: The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make

#32

Post by awb » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 3:19 PM UTC

SamBam wrote: post #24

I'd be interested to know how people (humanity) would feel if it were known that the universe would just come to a hard-stop in a million years. In practice, it should make no difference. That's already much, much further than any of us can comprehend. It's a hundred times the length of recorded human history. What would it really matter? On the other hand, it would seem so short, I think a sense of nihilism would al…

Tech moves so fast, I can’t think of a termination event that couldn’t be solved with 1M years of exponential growth.

Even with the Big Freeze or Big Crunch of the universe, there’s at least some hope that some currently unknown science, energy source, etc. might be accessible to us in 1M years that could delay or reduce the severity of the event.

But, let’s say there’s a an event that will somehow destroy our entire solar system in 500 years, that would certainly divide people into two camps: one hell bent on escaping the solar system at all costs and another determined to enjoy every last moment before extinction.

Re: The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make

#33

Post by CDRdude » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 3:21 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #30

SamBam wrote: post #24

I'd be interested to know how people (humanity) would feel if it were known that the universe would just come to a hard-stop in a million years. In practice, it should make no difference. That's already much, much further than any of us can comprehend. It's a hundred times the length of recorded human history. What would it really matter? On the other hand, it would seem so short, I think a sense of nihilism would al…

We already have so much nihilism, it's hard to imagine it being possible to turn the dial up further.

I don’t see this. Many people in my country are religious, and believe that God (the Christian one) has a plan for them—-the exact opposite of nihilism.

Re: The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make

#34

Post by goldenkey » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 3:21 PM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #21

yalogin wrote: post #7

So the universe is just biding it’s time to die? This is it, no more creation, no more new platforms for biological miracles. Interesting, so while humans figure out how to navigate the universe, many planets/stars would simply die and we will not even know.

Remember, this is from our current understanding. 500 years from now, who knows what we’ll discover. Or maybe our whole theory is wrong.

Or the effect of conscious intelligence is so great, we will have to rewrite some of the laws of cosmology. After all, when a human being with a death star can simply change the angle of the beam to destroy one planet instead of another, clearly the impetus is that weakly energetic states (state of the brain) are extremely potent in the evolution of the universe. Normally we think that the magnitude of energy is what matters. However, when it comes to conscious entities, it is the structure that matters. Kinda throws a wrench in just using total energy as a measure of the effect that an object can cause. Brains use hardly any energy and yet cause absurdly strong effects that we still don't know the full extent of.

One peculiarity about quantum mechanics is that even the lowest energy particles still require the universe to compute their paths and wavefunctions. This has commonly been a target of ways to verify if we are living in a simulation - looking for screen door effects in the interference patterns of extremely low energy particles. The hypothesis was that perhaps the universe attempts to save computation on low energy particles. We did not find any screen door phenomena though. So the current stance is that the universe provides full fidelity wavefunctions to particles independent of the magnitude of their energy. A low energy particle or system can have a wavefunction of seemingly limitless quantum complexity.

Cosmology currently revolves around magnitude of energy, not the butterfly effect or intelligence. Expect this to change as we further our understanding.

Re: The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make

#35

Post by stormdennis » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 3:22 PM UTC

awb wrote: post #32

SamBam wrote: post #24

I'd be interested to know how people (humanity) would feel if it were known that the universe would just come to a hard-stop in a million years. In practice, it should make no difference. That's already much, much further than any of us can comprehend. It's a hundred times the length of recorded human history. What would it really matter? On the other hand, it would seem so short, I think a sense of nihilism would al…

Tech moves so fast, I can’t think of a termination event that couldn’t be solved with 1M years of exponential growth. Even with the Big Freeze or Big Crunch of the universe, there’s at least some hope that some currently unknown science, energy source, etc. might be accessible to us in 1M years that could delay or reduce the severity of the event. But, let’s say there’s a an event that will somehow destroy our entire…

500 years is too long, 100 more like. Live but don't have kids

Re: The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make

#36

Post by stackbutterflow » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 3:22 PM UTC

misthop wrote: post #12

Wikipedia has a page on the Timeline of the far future[1]. It lists a ton of physical and cosmological things that are predicted to happen based on our current understanding of physics. A really fun read that always takes me down a rabbit's hole of phenomena wikipedia pages. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future

There's a video on that. The end of the universe: https://youtu.be/uD4izuDMUQA

This is so weird to think that for most of its life the universe will be empty and cold. Like what's even the point of all this, of life, of us, if in the end nothing matters, everything decays into nothingness.

Re: The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make

#37

Post by jeremyjh » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 3:23 PM UTC

m3kw9 wrote: post #27

A question came to mind: where do the photons go if it gets past the end of the observable universe?

The observable universe is simply what exists in our light cone - what can reach us before the space between is expanding faster than the speed of light. There is no reason to think there is anything special about us or our light cone and no reason to think things outside it would look different to an observer nearer to them.

Re: The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make

#38

Post by lordnacho » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 3:24 PM UTC

awb wrote: post #32

SamBam wrote: post #24

I'd be interested to know how people (humanity) would feel if it were known that the universe would just come to a hard-stop in a million years. In practice, it should make no difference. That's already much, much further than any of us can comprehend. It's a hundred times the length of recorded human history. What would it really matter? On the other hand, it would seem so short, I think a sense of nihilism would al…

Tech moves so fast, I can’t think of a termination event that couldn’t be solved with 1M years of exponential growth. Even with the Big Freeze or Big Crunch of the universe, there’s at least some hope that some currently unknown science, energy source, etc. might be accessible to us in 1M years that could delay or reduce the severity of the event. But, let’s say there’s a an event that will somehow destroy our entire…

On the other hand, 1M years is so far away, everything can be put off to be dealt with later.

There's at least one or two issues that we maybe should think about addressing before it's too late.

Re: The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make

#39

Post by dekken_ » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 3:24 PM UTC

ant6n wrote: post #29

SamBam wrote: post #24

I'd be interested to know how people (humanity) would feel if it were known that the universe would just come to a hard-stop in a million years. In practice, it should make no difference. That's already much, much further than any of us can comprehend. It's a hundred times the length of recorded human history. What would it really matter? On the other hand, it would seem so short, I think a sense of nihilism would al…

So uh another million year wait for Jesus?

or maybe you're Jesus?

Re: The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make

#40

Post by platz » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 3:24 PM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #28

platz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is 'pretty much the same', and what are the 'fairly good reasons'?

“Pretty much the same” is “has stars and planets like we do, ignoring the solar system which might be weird”. The “fairly good reasons” are that that assumption has allowed us to develop a very good understanding of physics – good even by standards that don't make that assumption. If an assumption is a good one, it's probably a true one… at least, the others have been, and I assume we can generalise from them.

Inflation is the leading cosmological theory. If that is true, all our observations are descended from a pinpoint region of space that contained everything we can observe now. We don't have any means to judge whether the parameters of space are the same or different in regions that have always been causally separated from us.

Be more comfortable with saying "I (We) don't know".