Thoughts on this..

yuppies

Through reading various wikipedia articles :pac: , I see that that physicists have made many predictions for the future of the universe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future

The consensus is that the universe 'began' about 13.7 billion years ago but the predictions in the link above run into the quadrillions, and quadrillion-quadrillions! Is it really the case that we just happen to exist in what will *eventually* turn out to have been the first .00000000000000000000001 etc percent of the life of the universe? Does this strike anybody else as a bit mad?

yuppies

Does anybody have any input on this?

krd

Why would it strike you as little mad?


I'll put your thinking in context. Imagine, you have some cheese in your fridge. and at some point you open the door of the fridge and a fungus spore gets on the piece of cheese. And you leave the cheese in the fridge and forget about it. After a few days. The fungus spore hatches. Somehow, the fungus spore finds out it's in a fridge - and then it finds out how old the fridge is - it speculates how long the fridge could be there. It's shocked. It's such a long time frame in comparison to length of its existence............You remember you had some cheese - you make a sandwich and eat the cheese...you don't even notice the fungus.

In cosmic terms......That fungus spore is a galaxy............


Do you see how small and insignificant you are?

You didn't think the universe was revolving around you, did you?

ray giraffe

With current understanding the universe is expected to expand forever.

But our understanding is limited e.g. dark energy - our understanding could change in the coming decades and centuries and perhaps we will discover the universe has an end. Who knows?

It does seem likely that there will be an end to all life in the universe eventually (e.g. increasing entropy) whether the universe itself ends or not.

You might get more speculation in the Popular Science forum.

yuppies

krd wrote: »

Do you see how small and insignificant you are?

You didn't think the universe was revolving around you, did you?

Ha..I both know and love how insignificant human beings are. That's why the link I posted above kind of irks me... our existence on this speck of dust is pointless and aimless, and yet we also happen to coincidentally exist in the first trillionths of a second, if you were to translate the expected age of the future universe into a 24 hour clock, going by the figures quoted in that link for future events in the universe, and supposing the universe is only 13.7 billion years old.. get me? Again, don't think the universe revolves around me or humanity or earth :rolleyes: but I think something must be up ie. physicists have it wrong or we're being too anthropocentric at some point along the way..
Is it the case that the conditions for life as we know it to exist can only exist in the earliest stages of the/a universe.... ah what am I saying, as if anyone in the world knows the definite correct answer!!

krd

But the thing is........Many of guesses that say we're the only intelligent life in the universe, are probably wrong. It's the same laws of physics and chemistry, that will hold on a planet orbiting a distant star, as holds here. So, if we're here - we're probably not alone.


It might take a billion years to find out how to travel across the universe, to meet each other.......but we have time.....we have all the time in the world.


We may not have a God...but we have each other.

yuppies

is it possible this thread could be moved to the popular science forum? :pac:

Sev

yuppies wrote: »

Is it really the case that we just happen to exist in what will *eventually* turn out to have been the first .00000000000000000000001 etc percent of the life of the universe? Does this strike anybody else as a bit mad?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

Something to think about

Wh1stler

yuppies wrote: »

Through reading various wikipedia articles :pac: , I see that that physicists have made many predictions for the future of the universe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future

The consensus is that the universe 'began' about 13.7 billion years ago but the predictions in the link above run into the quadrillions, and quadrillion-quadrillions! Is it really the case that we just happen to exist in what will *eventually* turn out to have been the first .00000000000000000000001 etc percent of the life of the universe? Does this strike anybody else as a bit mad?

They don't even know what the Universe is made of. (Dark matter/energy and all that.)

Any speculation on the age of or the ultimate end of the Universe is pure conjecture albeit slightly supported by some observations.

The thing is, these observations could hint at something altogether different to the modern interpretations of physics.

yuppies

Wh1stler wrote: »

They don't even know what the Universe is made of. (Dark matter/energy and all that.)

Any speculation on the age of or the ultimate end of the Universe is pure conjecture albeit slightly supported by some observations.

The thing is, these observations could hint at something altogether different to the modern interpretations of physics.

It always occurred to me (and I'm sure many others here) that even the concept of time is a very human/animal concept ie. it's a totally subjective property of the universe and so much of current physics isn't objectively true...so maybe we'll never understand all this stuff! Anyway, the content of my opening post leads me to believe that we're looking at physics the wrong way or that they've gotten something wrong.