Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning

Post by irrational » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #54

djsumdog wrote: post #10

This seems different than the concept of infinite time, where prior to the big band there was something the collapsed into a ball of energy and maybe someday our universe will collapse back again (which has lost merit since we've seen matter in the universe isn't slowing down in spreading apart, but accelerating .. meaning in a few trillion years, atoms may be so far apart that light can't reach anything .. the event…

Wikipedia's 'Timeline of the Far Future' is a great article on the posibilities of our universe's fate [0]. Of note are the entries near the end of the list. Year 10^(10^(50)) : Estimated time for a Boltzmann brain to appear in the vacuum via a spontaneous entropy decrease [1] Year 10^(10^(120)) : High estimate for the time for the universe to reach its final energy state, even in the presence of a false vacuum. Year…

Post by EdwardDiego » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 4:48 PM UTC

sonnyblarney wrote: post #59

EdwardDiego wrote: post #53

Am I wrong, or are they arguing on matters of belief rather than evidence?

The word is 'speculation' not 'belief' that that's pretty much what all science is. The evidence usually comes later.

Post by BOBOTWINSTON » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #31

onion2k wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only disturbing if you believe everything is simple enough that humans could comprehend it straight away. If you accept that some stuff is beyond our understanding, and will be for quite a while yet, everything is much less bothersome. Accept that you are fallible and the universe is fine. I'm not saying this is easy though.

> If you accept that some stuff is beyond our understanding isn't that just an elaborate way to say 'give up'? I asked religious friends of mine about what god _is_, and the common answer is that it's beyond human understanding. I don't believe that people should take things on faith, and accept that anything is beyond understanding.

Post by codetrotter » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 4:51 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #10

This seems different than the concept of infinite time, where prior to the big band there was something the collapsed into a ball of energy and maybe someday our universe will collapse back again (which has lost merit since we've seen matter in the universe isn't slowing down in spreading apart, but accelerating .. meaning in a few trillion years, atoms may be so far apart that light can't reach anything .. the event…

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

deepsun wrote: post #51

djsumdog wrote: post #10

This seems different than the concept of infinite time, where prior to the big band there was something the collapsed into a ball of energy and maybe someday our universe will collapse back again (which has lost merit since we've seen matter in the universe isn't slowing down in spreading apart, but accelerating .. meaning in a few trillion years, atoms may be so far apart that light can't reach anything .. the event…

> what, if anything, is outside the observable universe The answer is similar to the time. Remember, in cosmology there's no really separate space and time, there's only space-time. So when you're looking at the edge of the observable universe, you really looking back in time. So the answer to the question "what is outside" is the same as "what was before". Or, in simpler words, the question is meaningless, as there'…