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"How the Universe Ends" Topic


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266 hits since 23 Oct 2018
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Tango0123 Oct 2018 10:12 p.m. PST

"Somewhere between a second and a millennium from now, you will die. Your body and all of its parts will cease functioning and rejoin the Earth as regular, lifeless stuff. The Earth, too, will die, engulfed by an expanding, aging Sun. The Sun will burn off all of its fuel and end up a white dwarf, then burn out and die. The Milky Way will collide with nearby Andromeda, and form a large, elliptical galaxy, which will die by losing all of its stars to intergalactic space. The corpses of those remaining stars will die, decaying into their constituent parts. The universe will age onward until all matter is either stored in black holes or floating as free elementary particles. Those black holes will evaporate, and the universe will die. All that was will be an icy cold nothing, forever.

This is one of the happier possible endings—this "heat death," as in, the death of heat, at least leaves us time to say goodbye. The truth is, the universe far predates humans, it will far outlast humans, and contemplating its death is a depressing effort that highlights our incredible insignificance. At least studying the physics of it all serves as a nice pastime while we wait to dissolve into nothingness…."
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Amicalement
Armand

Andrew Walters24 Oct 2018 9:45 a.m. PST

Too many unanswered questions to put much faith in projections for the end of time. Mankind will change so much, assuming we escape the solar system, that our concerns will be different. Maybe we won't even be dependent on physical form or just this one universe.

But imagine if humans are more or less the same, living throughout the galaxy, then living in orbit around the super-long-lived red dwarfs. These become further and further apart until communication between them is impossible. So it's you and your friends in your little world around this one star and it's not just that you can't travel anywhere else, there effectively isn't anywhere else, as everything is gone from the night sky. All the radioactive elements have finally decayed, all the science humans can learn has been learned, there is no future, and your little start is finally, slowly cooling. What would be worth doing at that point? Weird thought.

Patrick R24 Oct 2018 11:01 a.m. PST
Mithmee24 Oct 2018 5:13 p.m. PST

The Milky Way will collide with nearby Andromeda

Really going to hate missing this.

Andrew Walters24 Oct 2018 10:24 p.m. PST

Maybe someone has done a simulation video, but considering the very small number of stars we can actually see in the sky, I don't know if it would be all that awesome a sight.

In my neck of the woods, by the coast, there's enough humidity and light pollution that I can only recall seeing the milky way a few times, and then only faintly. During the collision and reformation that band of light would just be different, epoch by epoch.

It would be fantastic to see from a great distance, sped up a few hundred million times. But simulations will be better than the real thing here.

ScottWashburn Sponsoring Member of TMP25 Oct 2018 4:20 a.m. PST

You can see Andromeda on a clear night with your naked eyes if it is dark enough. But the fuzzy patch we can see is just the galaxy's core. If you could see the whole thing like in pictures it would be four or five times the width of a full moon.

Bowman25 Oct 2018 5:19 a.m. PST

Really going to hate missing this

Here's a reconstruction:

YouTube link

Looks kind of pretty from far away, but I assume not so much up close.

Bowman25 Oct 2018 5:36 a.m. PST

But imagine if humans are more or less the same, living throughout the galaxy, then living in orbit around the super-long-lived red dwarfs. These become further and further apart until communication between them is impossible.

I'm not sure if I'm reading this correctly, but if we colonize more star systems within the Milky Way galaxy, then those living around the red dwarfs will not be getting farther apart. Space between galaxies is expanding but the galaxies themselves are not. There is too much matter and mass concentrated in galaxies to have them affected by the expansionist forces. This is the abode of the yet not understood Dark Energy.

link

Plus, as the video above shows, we will have a potentially devastating collision just shy of 4 billion years from now.

link

Tango0125 Oct 2018 11:42 a.m. PST

Many thanks!.


Amicalement
Armand

14Bore27 Oct 2018 5:27 p.m. PST

Hopefully there will be a restaurant at the end of the universe to watch it.

Bowman28 Oct 2018 6:07 a.m. PST

If you could see the whole thing like in pictures it would be four or five times the width of a full moon.

I thought this crazy until I looked it up. You can see the whole galaxy with binoculars, if in a suitably dark sky location. Here's a good way to locate Andromeda.

link

Gunfreak Supporting Member of TMP28 Oct 2018 12:30 p.m. PST

The universe will end when I tell it to end. Not before and not after.

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