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

nautil.us

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

#61

Post by haxiomic »

marton78 wrote: post #54
haxiomic wrote: post #19

This dramatic visualization of the timeline for the rest of the universe is well worth a watch to get a feel for what we believe the future of the universe to look like [TIMELAPSE OF THE FUTURE: A Journey to the End of Time] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA However, when you get to the end (which is perhaps a little depressing!), I'd recommend learning a bit about what we think could come 'after' this peri…

Obligatory link to Isaac Asimov's wonderful short story "The Last Question" which explores this topic: https://www.physics.princeton.edu/ph115/LQ.pdf

I have never read this before, thank you :)

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

#62

Post by jakelazaroff »

CDRdude wrote: post #33
jrochkind1 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This does often manifest in what is essentially nihilism, though — e.g. “I’m not taking the vaccine; if God’s will is that I die from COVID then so be it.”

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

#64

Post by eloff »

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…

If civilization lasts a million years it would be an accomplishment. I think the likely answer to the Fermi paradox is that civilization is but a short lived spark on evolutionary timescales and self destructs.

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

#65

Post by time0ut »

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…

Termination event: this simulation will yield the desired answer after another 1 million years of simulated time and the plug will be pulled.

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

#66

Post by Tepix »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #23
platz wrote: post #17

Whenever you see the word Universe in pop sci, you can just sub in Observable Universe.

It's interesting that we can presently see two galaxies that will never be able to see each other. They will drift out of Earth's observable universe before each other's light would have a chance to reach the other. Dark energy & accelerating expansion is weird.

Chances are you can make a string of thousands (trillions?) of such galaxies. We currently have no way of knowing the size of the non-observable universe.

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

#67

Post by wizzwizz4 »

platz wrote: post #40
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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".

Most physicists agree.

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

#68

Post by Tepix »

api wrote: post #57
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok this trillion number you are talking about makes me feel better about this article.

Yeah we have a good backup star AI intelligences would have no problem traveling between stars. Who cares if it takes thousands of years even... just turn yourself off. Even better send automated factories to build compute power and robotics and then transmit your minds when the new site is ready.

It does have pretty nasty flares...

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

#70

Post by slickrick216 »

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…

I like to think it’d be something like the planet Kricket https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Krikkit
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