It's not all that sad

[countrycousin]

Dennis Overbye has an essay on the New York Times (registration required) lamenting the prediction that soon we won't be able to see anything but what's in our local galaxy cluster.  (And that might have merged into a single galaxy.)  That will long have ceased to interest anyone around here, but he is thinking of future societies trying to figure out how the universe works, and not having our ability to see far-off clusters - expansion will have taken them beyond our light horizon.


This is, to him, one of the more depressing papers he has read.  And one of the correctives he suggests is to start a seeding program so that future socities might get hieroglyphics which, when deciphered, will tell them of the good old days when countless galaxy clusters stretched for as far as could be seen.  Maybe that project would keep us out of trouble - he quotes James Peebles as suggesting that we, USA in particular, might have concerns that will materialize earlier.  If not that, Peebles points out that we suspect we are heading toward an asymptotically empty universe with all of the stars burnt out and perhaps all of matter decayed into expanding radiation, although this would be a bit later on.

Just to put things into perspective, this calamity is going to happen in a mere 100 billion years.  The current universe is about 15 billion, the Earth about 5 billion.

Life, and the conditions that support it, comes and goes and only in very favorable spots.  All things come to an end, but perhaps there are also many more beginnings.  And perhaps unanticipated endings.  We have no idea what caused the Big Bang.  And how many of them there are or will be.  And whether those conditions might come along in the middle of our universe some day, perhaps ending the run of this universe, but starting up another.

Maybe, without all those galactic clusters to distract them, future savants will be able to figure out how to get along with each other.

Comments

[elfbiter.livejournal.com]

I suppose he is not one of those who support the possibility of Multiple Big Bangs?

[countrycousin.livejournal.com]

As best I can tell, he is a very knowledgeable science reporter, well versed in physics and astronomy. He is feeling sad for the astrophysicists of 100 billion years hence, and, I agree, they (if there is a they) will be missing clues we have. And the giants on whose shoulders we now stand didn't have their own shoulders to stand on. Nor the Hubble to make all these illuminating observations.

So he has a point, but I think he'd allow the possibility of multiple big bangs (if, like the good reporter he is, he finds someone of stature to make the speculation).

What I find much more depressing is that technology limits seem to be restricting us more tightly to the vicinity of the Earth, and we, my countrymen in particular, are greedily making it a tougher place to live on. I think it would be nice if, when the Sun becomes unstable, there were some who could and would run from it. That's coming a bit sooner than the vanishing of the galaxy clusters.

[elfbiter.livejournal.com]

By the time the sun expands enough to engulf the Earth, human species (assuming we survive) has either evolved to something else, has probably diverged into multiple species (with or without expansion into space) or it's our potential successor species that has to cope with the problem.

Thinking backwards, I think that even the age of the whole human civilization is too brief a time to make any definitive conclusions about the fate of the universe (or, according to some quantum phycisists, multiverse). In the fortcoming years cosmologists are likely to change their mind numerous times.

On the other hand, IMO, nature recycles everything. It just may be that the cosmological scales are longer than solar lifetimes.

[countrycousin.livejournal.com]

cosmologists are likely to change their mind numerous times

Yes. :<)

On the other hand, IMO, nature recycles everything. It just may be that the cosmological scales are longer than solar lifetimes.

I suppose. Some of the mechanisms aren't too clear at this point. :<) I don't like some of the multiverse concepts - those that use the concept to handle quantum randomness - because they seem so wasteful. Yankee bias no doubt. (note that usage of "Yankee" - old frugal New Englander - has not been at all synonymous with "American" for a long time)

More-or-less independent multiverses in some higher dimensions don't bother me as much, but that is provincial; I suppose we have more surprises ahead of us as big as relativity, quantum mechanics, big bangs and accelerating expansion.

[elfbiter.livejournal.com]

My pet pieve tends to be when certain kind of parapscyhologists try to use quantum mechanics as a "proof" of their own ideas... Still, even if I do read science fiction, multiverse theories sound a bit too grandiose - not to mention a "free lunch" in a cosmic scale. Everything out of nothing.

(I'm afraid that in Finland the word "jenkki" means pretty much all U.S. Americans... )

[countrycousin.livejournal.com]

QM does seem to get blamed for a number of remarkable concepts. One I like, having to do with some of the religious arguments, is that if a God with commonly attributed powers wished to intervene in the world without burning bushes or otherwise alarming the natives, it could be done by holding One's thumb on which quantum results were selected and compensating somewhere else. I don't know how one could tell the difference.

re: jenkki - Oh, I'm sure - no doubt to the irritation of those with strong southern US identities. :<)

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

One of the sad possible outcomes of this is also that future people won't have the proof most need to believe in a universe out there: If you can't see it, how can you believe in it? No the entire universe is this big ball of stars we all live in... which also makes me wonder what will become of the Local Group if we merge: Each contains a supermassive black hole at its heart. I'm thinking that most life will be snuffed out during that period.

And then the long darkness.

[countrycousin.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is what is bothering Overbye.

Re: life snuffing - you may be right. Presumably the various galactic centers will make swings through parts of the other galaxies and eventually wind up near each other, though I have no idea what time scale that would be. And fuel would keep getting burned up and gobbled up. Whenever it happens, there seems to be a long dark period ahead for the universe as it all dies down.

But that is true for us all. My assumption is that if there was one Big Bang with the right parameters, eventually and/or somewhere there will be another. And another.

Maybe someday some bright entity will figure out how to learn about them. At the moment, I'd be happy to get to another star system. :<)