So, I've been a bit anxious about the future of humanity lately. Thinking long term now. So, I know we need to establish other colonies in this solar system and other galaxies too in order to survive long term. But, then I'm thinking, could humanity, or any population for that matter, ever advance enough to be able to survive the Big Crunch? And, if not, then what is the point of anything we do anyway? It's all just gonna get crunched in the end.
This is sort of the subject of one of Asimov's short stories.
Humanity advances to the stage where they construct a computer that transcends space and time. Long after (?) humans are gone and the universe is a puddle of homogenous warmth, the computer finds a solution to irreversible entropy and in a moment of AI irony says "Let there be light".
True story (about an untrue story).
That story doesn't make me feel any better. And are you sure the author wasn't O. Henry? Sounds like a classic O. Henry ending.
Now I'm kinda depressed that the complete works of O. Henry will be destroyed in the Big Crunch, if not billions of years sooner.
The more important question is...
Can jamin get laid by then?
Worried about the future wrote:
That story doesn't make me feel any better.
I maybe should have mentioned that I was not trying to make you feel better. Like the universe, I am completely indifferent to your suffering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_QuestionI've pondered this before and I think it's theoretically possible if you somehow compacted the basis of life and civilization into the smallest sub-atomic level possible so that whatever we needed to pass through was already 100% crunched prior to the crunch. This way it would be incapable of shrinking. Sure, that's hard to do. Sure, it's hard to know it would expand again in any functional way.
What is this Big Crunch you speak of?
As current scientific knowledge points towards our universe expanding endlessly not it collapsing in on itself
OP kind of worded it wrong.
"The Last Question" is about the eventual theorized heat death of the Universe, when no more stars can be formed, caused by the endless expansion of the Universe.
The jury is still out on the Expanding Forever vs Big Crunch and after a year long review of the literature I subscribe to the Big Crunch theory, therefore it is what I fear most in the world.
Worried about the Future wrote:
The jury is still out on the Expanding Forever vs Big Crunch and after a year long review of the literature I subscribe to the Big Crunch theory, therefore it is what I fear most in the world.
4/10
You got responses, but it's too blatantly stupid.
Worried about the Future wrote:
The jury is still out on the Expanding Forever vs Big Crunch and after a year long review of the literature I subscribe to the Big Crunch theory, therefore it is what I fear most in the world.
Build your shelter now, the end is nigh.
Please tell us more about this year-long review Confucius.
Worried about the Future wrote:
The jury is still out on the Expanding Forever vs Big Crunch and after a year long review of the literature I subscribe to the Big Crunch theory, therefore it is what I fear most in the world.
The grand jury on Expanding Forever (heat death) vs big crunch came back in 1998 with the dark energy theory. There is no observational evidence for the Big Crunch.
Hope that elevates your fear.
To be honest, it was slightly less than a year. More like 11 months, plus an extra week.
This all started because my sister got me a book for christmas last year called From the Big Bang to the Big Crunch and Everything in Between, written by Vlad Van Rosenthal. I honestly have no idea why she bought me this book, except that it was in the bargain bin at our local Books-a-Million. However, the book has totally changed my life, and even my worldview. Perhaps, I don't even have a worldview any more and that's really the most that my previous worldview could change, right?
Anyway, my studies consisted of reading this book. It was a bit tedious for the most part, which is why it took me 11 months plus an odd week or two to finish it. But, man, it packs a terrible punch.
I finally understand what Bob Seger meant when he sang, "Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then."
Sorry if I've similiarly ruined anyone else's life by even talking about this, but it is just all too much for me alone. Needed to unburden my soul a bit.
Worried about the Future wrote:
To be honest, it was slightly less than a year. More like 11 months, plus an extra week.
This all started because my sister got me a book for christmas last year called From the Big Bang to the Big Crunch and Everything in Between, written by Vlad Van Rosenthal. I honestly have no idea why she bought me this book, except that it was in the bargain bin at our local Books-a-Million. However, the book has totally changed my life, and even my worldview. Perhaps, I don't even have a worldview any more and that's really the most that my previous worldview could change, right?
Anyway, my studies consisted of reading this book. It was a bit tedious for the most part, which is why it took me 11 months plus an odd week or two to finish it. But, man, it packs a terrible punch.
I finally understand what Bob Seger meant when he sang, "Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then."
Sorry if I've similiarly ruined anyone else's life by even talking about this, but it is just all too much for me alone. Needed to unburden my soul a bit.
I don't think you're the brightest bulb in the box.
The universe is so vast that probability requires the existence of an un fathomable level of life sustaining planets, and intelligent species.
Level One, the level your species has reached, begins with the invention of the flying machine. The next level is achieved when a species is no longer dominated by or dependent upon it's own primary – your Sun. They are able to prosper away from their own, or indeed any other, stellar system. Humanity is only just into the flying machine phase, so as you can imagine, on that scale, the human race is somewhat near the bottom of the level one pack.
The only ones who reach level two are those who learn to accept and to live with their most dangerous knowledge. Each and every individual in such a species must eventually become capable of destroying their entire species at any time. Yet they must learn to control themselves to the degree that they can survive even such deadly insight. And frankly, they’re the only ones we really want to see leaving their solar systems. Species that haven’t achieved that maturity could not be allowed to infect the rest of the universe, but fortunately that has never required my intervention. The knowledge always does the trick.
Level 3- A species evolves and advances to the point that it obtains godlike powers. Instead of manipulating matter, which requires energy, energy itself is manipulated. There will be species that reach this point, although they will be few.
It is worth emphasising two critical points about my atheist vision of godhood.
First the resulting intelligent entity is at least as omnipotent and omniscient as anything the religious believer can possibly imagine. Probably considerably more so because, in my experience, their imagination is somewhat limited. But any gods which emerge to meet my criteria for being gods will certainly be capable of all the trivial things religions assign to them. Most importantly they will be capable of creating Universes rather like our own and it is - in that sense - entirely plausible (though we cannot assess the probability) that we exist in a Universe created by such an entity.
But second, even if such an entity created our Universe, I am utterly certain that it would have evolved in another one - probably rather similar. In other words, in the eternal Chicken and Egg question, which came first, the Universe or the God, the answer is "a" Universe. This is, of course, the exact opposite of the religious concept, where a self booting creator magicked the universe/s into existence from nothing.
The principle evidence for my belief is precisely the Emergent Property of intelligence that is clearly a fundamental component of matter. I have argued elsewhere that Intelligence is a continuum which began with the first quantum fluctuation and logically ends with godlike omniscience/omnipotence. We ourselves are perhaps 1% of the way along this path.
Perhaps our universe was created by a hype revolved species seeking to avoid the death of their universe?
Einstein Jr. wrote:
Worried about the Future wrote:The jury is still out on the Expanding Forever vs Big Crunch and after a year long review of the literature I subscribe to the Big Crunch theory, therefore it is what I fear most in the world.
The grand jury on Expanding Forever (heat death) vs big crunch came back in 1998 with the dark energy theory. There is no observational evidence for the Big Crunch.
Hope that elevates your fear.
Elevates or alleviates?
Worried about the Future wrote:
Sorry if I've similiarly ruined anyone else's life by even talking about this,
That's ok. To be honest I think my life peaked when I touched my first pair of boobs and it's pretty much been downhill after that.
EPO is my middle name wrote:
The universe is so vast that probability requires the existence of an un fathomable level of life sustaining planets, and intelligent species.
Level One, the level your species has reached, begins with the invention of the flying machine. The next level is achieved when a species is no longer dominated by or dependent upon it's own primary – your Sun. They are able to prosper away from their own, or indeed any other, stellar system. Humanity is only just into the flying machine phase, so as you can imagine, on that scale, the human race is somewhat near the bottom of the level one pack.
The only ones who reach level two are those who learn to accept and to live with their most dangerous knowledge. Each and every individual in such a species must eventually become capable of destroying their entire species at any time. Yet they must learn to control themselves to the degree that they can survive even such deadly insight. And frankly, they’re the only ones we really want to see leaving their solar systems. Species that haven’t achieved that maturity could not be allowed to infect the rest of the universe, but fortunately that has never required my intervention. The knowledge always does the trick.
Level 3- A species evolves and advances to the point that it obtains godlike powers. Instead of manipulating matter, which requires energy, energy itself is manipulated. There will be species that reach this point, although they will be few.
It is worth emphasising two critical points about my atheist vision of godhood.
First the resulting intelligent entity is at least as omnipotent and omniscient as anything the religious believer can possibly imagine. Probably considerably more so because, in my experience, their imagination is somewhat limited. But any gods which emerge to meet my criteria for being gods will certainly be capable of all the trivial things religions assign to them. Most importantly they will be capable of creating Universes rather like our own and it is - in that sense - entirely plausible (though we cannot assess the probability) that we exist in a Universe created by such an entity.
But second, even if such an entity created our Universe, I am utterly certain that it would have evolved in another one - probably rather similar. In other words, in the eternal Chicken and Egg question, which came first, the Universe or the God, the answer is "a" Universe. This is, of course, the exact opposite of the religious concept, where a self booting creator magicked the universe/s into existence from nothing.
The principle evidence for my belief is precisely the Emergent Property of intelligence that is clearly a fundamental component of matter. I have argued elsewhere that Intelligence is a continuum which began with the first quantum fluctuation and logically ends with godlike omniscience/omnipotence. We ourselves are perhaps 1% of the way along this path.
Perhaps our universe was created by a hype revolved species seeking to avoid the death of their universe?
This actually changed my life