My all-time favorite wikipedia article, great to see it getting some attention. I find that along with providing great fodder for small-talk (among certain types), it causes me to experience a psychological effect analogous to the so-called "overview effect" experienced by astronauts. Attempting to conceive of one's place in cosmological time is great exercise.
Timeline of the far future
51–60 of 272 posts
Re: Timeline of the far future
#52Re: Timeline of the far future
#53The further I read, the smaller I feel.
The "Humanity" section has left me with a deep chill. I've already been in an existential mood the nature of life in the modern age, and now I've got the end of humanity to think about too...
Re: Timeline of the far future
#54Amazing that the entirety of human civilization as we know it fits in a smaller time scale than the very first event on this timeline (10,000 years from now). So while these time spans are minuscule on an astronomical scale, they are enormous on a human scale.
Indeed. In Neil DeGrasse Tyson's version of "Cosmos" there is a great illustration where he says that if we visualize the entire history of the universe as being scaled to one calendar year then every human being that has ever lived has essentially existed somewhere within the last 12 seconds of that year.
And that's including our ancestors.
Re: Timeline of the far future
#55Re: Timeline of the far future
#56Amazing that the entirety of human civilization as we know it fits in a smaller time scale than the very first event on this timeline (10,000 years from now). So while these time spans are minuscule on an astronomical scale, they are enormous on a human scale.
Indeed. In Neil DeGrasse Tyson's version of "Cosmos" there is a great illustration where he says that if we visualize the entire history of the universe as being scaled to one calendar year then every human being that has ever lived has essentially existed somewhere within the last 12 seconds of that year.
> In Neil DeGrasse Tyson's version of "Cosmos" there is a great illustration where he says that if we visualize the entire history of the universe as being scaled to one calendar year then every human being that has ever lived has essentially existed somewhere within the last 12 seconds of that year.
Was that in the original Carl Sagan version of Cosmos as well? I seem to recall it, but I've never seen the Neil DeGrasse Tyson version.
Re: Timeline of the far future
#57Amazing that the entirety of human civilization as we know it fits in a smaller time scale than the very first event on this timeline (10,000 years from now). So while these time spans are minuscule on an astronomical scale, they are enormous on a human scale.
Indeed. In Neil DeGrasse Tyson's version of "Cosmos" there is a great illustration where he says that if we visualize the entire history of the universe as being scaled to one calendar year then every human being that has ever lived has essentially existed somewhere within the last 12 seconds of that year.
Same sequence was in the original Cosmos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzG9fHMr9L4
Re: Timeline of the far future
#58> 230 million - Prediction of the orbits of the planets is impossible over greater time spans than this, due to the limitations of Lyapunov time. > [...] > 3.3 billion - 1% chance that Jupiter's gravity may make Mercury's orbit so eccentric as to collide with Venus, sending the inner Solar System into chaos. Possible scenarios include Mercury colliding with the Sun, being ejected from the Solar System, or colliding w…
There's no agreed upon definition of "Prediction" "the planets" or "the orbits", so its any random number between 1M and 10B years under wildly divergent criteria.
Orbits have a large number of degrees of freedom and the chaos noise amplification effect is different for each, so given 15M of noise in starting conditions the point along the orbit of the earth is completely unconstrained in about 100M years, but the diameter of the orbit is very tightly constrained in comparison. In 100M years it'll be pretty easy to draw an ellipse and completely impossible to predict where along that ellipse the earth will be, but it'll be somewhere along that ellipse.
There's no analogy in physics, but there is an analogy in numerical simulation, that its like predicting electron orbits. I can do organic chemistry and build lasers all day without knowing where any specific electron is located, does that mean prediction of electron orbits is impossible or that its irrelevant to most practical issues? The specific mechanism for electron orbits is a quantum mechanical limitation whereas the orbit problem is statistical undersampling of noisy data.
Given the services of a measurement calibration lab and sufficient budget I can predict very accurately what comes out of a screw making factory tomorrow given today's sample data without continuously supervising the factory overnight, but I can't calibrate the screw making factory today, let it run 100M years, and usefully statistically predict what the factory will try to ship on one given day 100M years from now.
Re: Timeline of the far future
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fun fact: most Boltzmann brains pass out in a matter of seconds, then die, and there's nothing they can do about that.
Maybe some Boltzmann brains start out with rich fulfilling memories. And then a later (or earlier) Boltzmann brain happens to exist with a continuation of those memories. (Now I realize I'm just reciting a plot point from the excellent book Permutation City ...)
And likewise, maybe others start out in a state of unimaginable agony with a long memory of the same.
Re: Timeline of the far future
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok, thanks guys. Quantum uncertainty is the reason we can't reach zero Kelvin, so it's kind of nonsense to ask why quantum effects still work at absolute zero. > It's not physically impossible for order to increase, it's just ridiculously unlikely. Would love to see resources that explain this (I think it comes down to quantum uncertainty again). > the basic idea is that the probability for anything to happen is diff…
Imagine you have a box with red marbles and blue marbles. You start shaking it. The marbles get mixed up. Pretty soon, they're completely mixed up. That's maximum entropy. Now imagine you keep shaking the box for a few years or so. Just by sheer coincidence, they might end up neatly sorted for a few seconds every now and then. That's like a Boltzmann brain. I think that's all there is to it in principle, but I'm not…
> you keep shaking the box for a few years or so
That was the part I was unsure about: Does the universe keep on shaking? The answer seems to be: Due to quantum uncertainty - yes. Why? No one really knows because we don't have a god-damn clue about why the universe works the way it works (although we have a good understanding how the universe works in many points, but not a coherent theory or framework that gives a conflict-free explanation).