countrycousin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
countrycousin) wrote2007-06-06 03:31 pm
countrycousin) wrote2007-06-06 03:31 pm
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It's not all that sad
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.
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.