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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

#81

Post by rbanffy »

ansible wrote: post #78
stackbutterflow wrote: post #36

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.

Thinking about this stuff is what prompted my thinking about things like suicide. The Universe is so vast. So much space, most of it with only the barest wisp of gas. Most of the solar systems we see in the night sky may not have life (we don't know yet). And yet here we are, a rare event in a vast Universe. In the end it doesn't matter what you do. What you accomplish or did not accomplish. What awards were won or l…

We live on some of the nicest and most interesting part of all of spacetime. I cherish every moment, even knowing our names and deeds will be long forgotten (at least I hope some of mine are) well before the first proton decays.

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

#82

Post by xamde »

webkike wrote: post #41
stackbutterflow wrote: post #36

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.

Super Mario bros is pretty fun

CATS ARE NICE (Death in Discworld)

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

#83

Post by kibwen »

roberthahn wrote: post #73
madmads wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean the universe is so incredibly vast that even if we figure out how to travel at the speed of light, we'll only ever get to see a small fraction of it. I don't think we'll have to worry about running out of places to explore.

So, about that. One of the weird things about General Relativity is that if we COULD travel at or near the speed of light, then time dilation and length contraction will conspire to enable a trio to the end of the observable universe in 30 years. So we could definitely explore the universe, we just have no way to share what we discover with our friends back home.

This is forgetting to account for the accelerating expansion of the universe. Even if one were to depart from Earth today, traveling at light speed, 94% of the observable universe is already impossible to reach. See this excellent video for more detail: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uzkD5SeuwzM

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

#85

Post by rbanffy »

itronitron wrote: post #74
lemonberry wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagined this as a modern buddhist story: The student approaches their master lamenting the meaninglessness of everything. The master, "Super Mario bros is pretty fun". Enlightenment ensues.

And then two schools of Buddhism diverged, one favoring Super Mario Bros and the other Super Mario Bros 2

I hate both, but Super Mario 64 is great.

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

#86

Post by malfist »

lemonberry wrote: post #47
stackbutterflow wrote: post #36

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.

"Nothing matters" This is true in the biggest sense of the word. But it's also false. We all have things that matter to us and the various communities that we belong to. In some ways, to me anyway, it's very liberating: life as a blank canvas to imbue it with the meaning we want on. That won't resonate with everyone or even most people, but it's motivating for me.

Check out the philosophy of "Thrownness": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrownness

It's a branch, kinda of absurdist. Nothing matters, nothing ever has, but that's liberating, just enjoy and make the most of what comes.

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

#87

Post by Aperocky »

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…

That's a bit extreme, but we have a billion years before this planet becomes a slightly bigger Venus, that should be enough time to figure out something.

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

#88

Post by Aperocky »

m3kw9 wrote: post #27

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

it can't get there. At least the ones that are emitted from us.

Similarly, the ones that are emitted by stuff beyond that boundary will never get to us. Because the space is stretching faster than the photon.

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

#89

Post by sjaak »

stackbutterflow wrote: post #77
kibwen wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there an axiom of your personal philosophy that causes you to conclude that something must persist for infinite time in order to possess meaning?

I can try. If the result of doing something vs doing nothing is indistinguishable after a certain time, does it matter that it ever happened?

Turn it around. If the result of doing something vs doing nothing /is/ distinguishable at some point in time, does the choice matter? Yes, it does at some point. Granted: it doesn’t matter at /most other points/ in time, sure. But it’s something.

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

#90

Post by cortesoft »

stackbutterflow wrote: post #77
kibwen wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there an axiom of your personal philosophy that causes you to conclude that something must persist for infinite time in order to possess meaning?

I can try. If the result of doing something vs doing nothing is indistinguishable after a certain time, does it matter that it ever happened?

Why wouldn’t it? I feel like things matter MORE when they don’t last forever. If something lasts forever, then each moment isn’t important, because you will have infinite more moments of the same thing. Only when something is limited does it have specialness.
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