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

nautil.us

181–190 of 213 posts

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

#181
post #151

It is important to contextualize what almost all means in this context of a vast and possibly infinite universe. It leaves an incomprehensible number of stars yet to form. It also leaves open a backdoor for a star forming Renaissance if blackhole activity dies down in another 10 billion years.

If we contextualize 95% of all to created stars were created it is still quite a lot dead. Then taking our context which is our observable universe which is only a small part of universe that we care about - we can certainly say it is dead.

Created != dead. The most common stars in the universe have lifetimes many times the observable universe's age. Even if all star formation stopped everywhere right this moment, we'd only be about 1% of the way through the era of stars. In reality, there is a long tail to stellar formation meaning we are actually much less far along.

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

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came up with similar thoughts after losing someone I loved. Helped immensely to think of time as a dimension. Even though I'm trapped on a one way course, those previous moments still exist. Even though the person I loved is dead and I'll never talk to her again, those moments of her life will always exist. As far as I know, nothing can ever erase it. There will always be a place in the universe where she's alive a…

This (that time is a dimension) is as I understand what most physicists believe today and constitutes the so-called eternalism (or "block universe") philosophy of time. According to this view, past/present/future are our (human) terms to explain what is already laid out and we're simply moving along the time access just like we move along in space (though of course only in direction). I've become a big believer in th…

I don't think most physicists subscribe to the view that things are laid out already. I think most believe that physics is non-deterministic due to QM. Other schools of thoughts like superdeterminism does believe what you're saying but I think this is a minority view (albeit advocated by some very high profile physicists).

What is not clear to me however is whether a block universe view can still be correct even if non-determinism is true.

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

#183
post #45

This makes me wonder, how many sparks of life and ancient civilizations have been wiped from the universe by the birth and death of stars. How many supernovae have violently ripped them from existence. How many rogue stars have cooked them to molten slag. What a small and fragile thing humanity is in the face of these forces.

And that's not including the ones whose planets destroyed them, or where they destroyed themselves. Or the ones that became space-faring and were wiped out by others/space/whatever.

The odds of surviving on any scale seem pretty infinitesimal. Common sense would dictate we focus on surviving external forces but instead we hate each other over our differences.

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

#184
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This topic always brings to mind Asimov’s short story, The Last Question. The story spans the life of the knowable universe. https://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

Such a great story, no one writes like this any more sadly.

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

#185
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.

There's a really cool movie called Aniara that explores this a bit. It's pretty dark, though.

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

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The idea of having some ultimate meaning is (as far as we can tell) an invention of the human mind. Whether life has meaning, whether it needs to have meaning, or even whether the meaning of life is predicated on influencing the universe is up to you to determine. If you asked 10 philosophers and religious leaders about the meaning of life, you'd probably get 100 different answers ranging from "seeking knowledge", "e…

I would hope to hear ten answers of "I don't know."

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

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd argue that life is its own point. If you organize your metaphysics in such a way that nothing matters unless it leads to a future that matters, then nothing can possibly matter, because by definition value is always postponed to "the future". But you can never get there, because once you do, it becomes "the present". Basically, you can't say that the value of every moment depends entirely on the value of future m…

We mostly find meaning in moving towards a goal. Once we attain it, it no longer brings us happiness. Having no goals or thinking that some future reward will change our lives doesn't seem to lead to good outcomes. It's strange, but "becoming" itself is meaningful.

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

#188
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of having some ultimate meaning is (as far as we can tell) an invention of the human mind. Whether life has meaning, whether it needs to have meaning, or even whether the meaning of life is predicated on influencing the universe is up to you to determine. If you asked 10 philosophers and religious leaders about the meaning of life, you'd probably get 100 different answers ranging from "seeking knowledge", "e…

I would hope to hear ten answers of "I don't know."

I fear you'd be disappointed. The religious leaders in particular are likely to be very gnostic about this topic.

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

#189
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the pessimistic view that we will actually lose progress and regress over time. Jonathan Blow has an interesting talk on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-SOdj4Kkk

In the micro sense we see this all day every day. Restaurants start good but aim for max profit and become garbage. Apps/websites start great then keep adding cruft while removing features. Capitalism. Housing. All we do is advance to regress and repeat ourselves over and over.

its incentives and check and balances nothing more

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

#190
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This topic always brings to mind Asimov’s short story, The Last Question. The story spans the life of the knowable universe. https://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

Amusingly we actually have an answer to that question. It’s possible to extract energy from expanding space time. Though if it keeps accelerating eventually even chemical bonds break down as electro magnetism isn’t enough.
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