Entropy - does it bother you?

Upforthematch

So one day at a lecture in college the second law of thermodynamics and the whole future of the 'universe' came up. One guy was getting incredibly worked up about this and asking the lecturer (who was not a physicist btw) all sorts of questions "so everything in the universe is going to a heat death?? etc...." and at the end it was like looking at Ross from friends when he discovers joey with rachel "I'm fine!!!" or imagine ryan tubridy discovering that Santa doesnt exist.

Clearly this guy's worldview or whatever had just died but I couldnt help think, like heat death so what?

Maybe I'm missing something here but has anyone else experienced that sort of feeling about this kind of stuff? Like the "oh sh1t" feeling a creationist gets holding a dinosaur fossil?

Pops_20

As a teenager I would get pretty freaked out from time to time by the idea that we're all sitting on a giant rock floating through space with no real purpose or destination. Nowadays I'm too taken up with the everyday unimportant stuff to care.

JasonStatham

I'd love to know what created the Universe or what it's sitting in. Like, what's at the boundary of the universe.

celtic_oz

its turtles .. all the way down

bucketybuck

It bothers me less as time goes on.

Upforthematch

JasonStatham wrote: »

I'd love to know what created the Universe or what it's sitting in. Like, what's at the boundary of the universe.

Well since I'm Christian I believe that God did but I know that's not a satisfactory answer from a scientific pov!

I love that video about the universe that's posted here sometimes.... it reminds me of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot I think it really gets the imagination going, but in a good way, not the freaked out kind of way that I'm asking about here?

Sky King

One day the sun is going to go out.

As a wise man Simey o' Donnell once said, 'Watch your Suns'!

y0ssar1an22

it is a bit of a mind ****. like what was there before the big bang? it cant be nothing!

Upforthematch

y0ssar1an22 wrote: »

it is a bit of a mind ****. like what was there before the big bang? it cant be nothing!

What's at the start of everything?

The letter 'e'

That's about all I know anyhow

fatbhoy

Sky King wrote: »

One day the sun is going to go out.

As a wise man Simey o' Donnell once said, 'Watch your Suns'!

And "where's me bucket".

I Am Nobody

Sky King wrote: »

One day the sun is going to go out.

As a wise man Simey o' Donnell once said, 'Watch your Suns'!

I don't think it will go out,but will start swallowing the planets in the future.Have I any proof of it not at all,but there ya go.

Man with broke phone

We will slowly start dying out as a race long before the sun goes out. We will go sterile from the radiation, slowly killed off by thirst and famine, have population thinning exercises, itll be drawn out over generations. Probably have all sorts of new pandemics.

Wouldn't worry about it too much. If you go back far enough we were descended from single cell organisms.
Imagine how proud they'd be if they could see us now, walking around worrying about stuff.

Ubbquittious

Upforthematch wrote: »

So one day at a lecture in college the second law of thermodynamics and the whole future of the 'universe' came up. One guy was getting incredibly worked up about this and asking the lecturer (who was not a physicist btw) all sorts of questions "so everything in the universe is going to a heat death?? etc...." and at the end it was like looking at Ross from friends when he discovers joey with rachel "I'm fine!!!" or imagine ryan tubridy discovering that Santa doesnt exist.

Clearly this guy's worldview or whatever had just died but I couldnt help think, like heat death so what?

Maybe I'm missing something here but has anyone else experienced that sort of feeling about this kind of stuff? Like the "oh sh1t" feeling a creationist gets holding a dinosaur fossil?

Yes it bothers me. The whole thing is quite depressing really. There must be a reset button on this universe somewhere

Kylta

OI think that some alien shot his load into a bucket of vomit and left it there. After so many heavy years (the opposite of light years) a sort if alien fungi thing grew and after more heavier years it developed into some sort of galaxy thing, after a substantial amount of spacial years well we came along.
So all of this galaxy was created by an alien having a **** into a bucket of puke.
The good news is the alien took a massive amount of heart attacks(he had 100 hearts and 15 dicks and a brain the size of a gnat) when he looked in the bucket and died. Thats why nobody out there knows we exist.
Again we're lucky if our alien forefather had lived we would be called pukespunk (actually a good name for a band) instead of human beings.
Our downfall will come when somebody develops alien bleach and decides to clean out the bucket

Upforthematch

Ubbquittious wrote: »

Yes it bothers me. The whole thing is quite depressing really. There must be a reset button on this universe somewhere

But this is the thing I don't get.... humanity has only come good the last 10,000 years or so (anthropocentric I know)... and say we have another 10,000 sure that's only a flash in the pan in universe terms.

Whether it's heat death for the universe or eternal cycles, who gives a frig?

ednwireland

Universe Tends Toward Disorder

second law of thermodynamics.

so theres no point tidying up

Junkyard Tom

Upforthematch wrote: »

I believe that God did

amadangomor

ednwireland wrote: »

Universe Tends Toward Disorder

second law of thermodynamics.

so theres no point tidying up

Young children are certainly agents of entropy.

Even when they create something like lego they want to destroy it straight away.

Quantum Erasure

Time bothers me more...

Like, why?

Mr_Muffin

God is coming to save us. Just not sure when.

Upforthematch

Quantum Erasure wrote: »

Time bothers me more...

Like, why?

Are you just interested and puzzled or more disturbed by it all?

But sure does time even exist from a physics point of view these days? Certainly not in the newtonian sense anyhow.

endacl

celtic_oz wrote: »

its turtles .. all the way down

De Chelonian Mobile!

emo72

Thank God there's an end. Who would like immortality thrust on them. after a couple of decades I'm about ready to check out anyway.

Canis Lupus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA

The entire thing is bleak as **** imo. It's surprising to see how long the universe will hang about after life as we know it and conditions for that life will be over.

You'd almost go a bit mad if you spent too much time thinking about it.

Upforthematch

Upforthematch wrote: »

So one day at a lecture in college the second law of thermodynamics and the whole future of the 'universe' came up. One guy was getting incredibly worked up about this and asking the lecturer (who was not a physicist btw) all sorts of questions "so everything in the universe is going to a heat death?? etc...." and at the end it was like looking at Ross from friends when he discovers joey with rachel "I'm fine!!!" or imagine ryan tubridy discovering that Santa doesnt exist.

Clearly this guy's worldview or whatever had just died but I couldnt help think, like heat death so what?

Maybe I'm missing something here but has anyone else experienced that sort of feeling about this kind of stuff? Like the "oh sh1t" feeling a creationist gets holding a dinosaur fossil?

The real question is who has been burying the fossils that Paleontologists dig up.

Upforthematch

Canis Lupus wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA

The entire thing is bleak as **** imo. It's surprising to see how long the universe will hang about after life as we know it and conditions for that life will be over.

You'd almost go a bit mad if you spent too much time thinking about it.

Well that video is like something hans zimmer threw up after breakfast, that's not the video I was thinking of anyway!

i_surge

Entropy is the bane of my existence....everything has to be cleaned, maintained or fixed before it goes to **** and it never stops.

But I couldn't care less what happens outside the earth's atmosphere.

Kylta

You all worry to much. What will be will be. Just enjoy life and worry about sh!t when it actually happens

NickNickleby

I watched Professor Brian Cox talk about this on telly. When my headache cleared, I think I remembered the gist of it. When the wind blows sand on a beach, there is no reason why it shouldn't blow the sand into sandcastles, but it never does, because the natural progression is away from order . Eventually, all atoms in the universe will disperse, like the sand. Then the atoms will fall asunder, then the atomic components will be reduced to energy, then the energy will just fizzle out.
Depressing, isn't it.

Upforthematch

NickNickleby wrote: »

I watched Professor Brian Cox talk about this on telly. When my headache cleared, I think I remembered the gist of it. When the wind blows sand on a beach, there is no reason why it shouldn't blow the sand into sandcastles, but it never does, because the natural progression is away from order . Eventually, all atoms in the universe will disperse, like the sand. Then the atoms will fall asunder, then the atomic components will be reduced to energy, then the energy will just fizzle out.
Depressing, isn't it.

But to me that's like saying archaeology is depressing. Have a look at some of the archaeology videos on youtube, amazing ruins... the romans achieved great stuff and now they're gone. The universe has an amazing story and it ends too. But why the depression??? What are people looking for that a finite universe doesn't already provide???

Wibbs

y0ssar1an22 wrote: »

it is a bit of a mind ****. like what was there before the big bang? it cant be nothing!

It was. All matter and time was created at the big bang, so there was no "before" because time itself didn't exist yet and no matter because again it didn't exist yet. Because we exist within a closed reality of time and causality and matter and entropy we are subjectively rooted in the concepts of before and after and existence itself and the simple language that describes them, but like I said they didn't exist.

Now that's on our plane of existence, there could well be something outside of that that existed, or exists. Other universes, other dimensions, a sea of energy that gives rise to new singularities that become universes like our own. Some might be in the goldilocks zone so matter itself doesn't get blasted by antimatter milliseconds after the initial expansion and they go on to form stars and heavy elements and planets and maybe life. Others may be over in an instant or stay dark. Some might leak through into our universe like the heat of a fire through your neighbours wall. This might explain forces that might be stronger all things considered but aren't. Gravity as an example, or dark energy.

Still, the fact that a bunch of upright hairless apes on one rock spinning around a boring star can even begin to contemplate the nature of reality is bloody impressive. Which leads to my own mad idea. Namely that if you take the gaia principle operating on earth(that in effect the earth is a giant organism trying to run a balance and maybe creating at some stage a species that can leave and go elsewhere and "reproduce" itself) and expand that to the universal. Maybe a goldilocks universe will eventually give rise to at least one species that will be able to understand it down to the marrow and more, go on to create new baby universe singularities in the "lab" that go on in another plane of existence and create more compexity and life. Essentially we, that is intelligent life, may well be the reproductive system of the universe.

Your Face

It doesn't bother me as much as paper straws.

completedit

Pops_20 wrote: »

As a teenager I would get pretty freaked out from time to time by the idea that we're all sitting on a giant rock floating through space with no real purpose or destination. Nowadays I'm too taken up with the everyday unimportant stuff to care.

Funny. When I was a teenager I was too busy caring about sticking a football top bins. Nowadays is when I ponder this stuff. Think I developed late.

NickNickleby

Upforthematch wrote: »

But to me that's like saying archaeology is depressing. Have a look at some of the archaeology videos on youtube, amazing ruins... the romans achieved great stuff and now they're gone. The universe has an amazing story and it ends too. But why the depression??? What are people looking for that a finite universe doesn't already provide???

Ah, my depressing quip was a bit tongue in cheek, but for as long as I can remember, I thought the Universe would last forever, or would collapse back in on itself and then start all over again. Strangely, there was reassurance in the uncertainty. While watching the Brian Cox programme, I was struck by the thought that when I die my atoms will probably become part of the cosmic dust and be reconstituted as a plant on a new planet aeons from now. Well, apparently not .:pac::pac:

Yes, the Romans have gone, but have been replaced by the Americans, who in turn will probably be replaced by another Superpower as the 'leader' or world's policeman. When the Universe fizzles out, that's it......

However, there's still hope.

I read a piece by Stephen Hawking, in which he explains how he believes the Universe could have been created out of 'nothing' without the need for a God. Essentially there is evidence of particles jumping into existence and then disappearing (back to where they came from??) . And that's how the singularity might have appeared out of nowhere to become the Universe.

So, we might all be back soon!

Wibbs' comment reminds me of Carl Sagan's suggestion - that WE are the Universe's way of contemplating its beauty. AND we might be the ONLY ones . Imagine that, so if we're alone in the Universe, that's awesome. Us not being alone is equally awesome, well to me anyway.

take everything

JasonStatham wrote: »

I'd love to know what created the Universe or what it's sitting in. Like, what's at the boundary of the universe.

The universe could well be boundless but finite.

take everything

Quantum Erasure wrote: »

Time bothers me more...

Like, why?

Time is just a psychological construct to account for change of stuff around us.

Although, if you follow that reasoning, everything is ultimately a psychological construct. Space and its dimensions are just psychological constructs as well.

For example why not have colour or temperature as another dimension as compelling as spatial dimensions.

Three dimensions of space (while being the only space that we seem to be able to exist in for anthropic principle reasons) is informed by our psychology as much as anything else IMO.

Kind of. 😀

My point being you can't separate the observer from the observed and that colours everything.

take everything

Why don't we remember the future is something else worth pondering regarding entropy, memory formation and our evolution.

NickNickleby

Wibbs wrote: »

It was. All matter and time was created at the big bang, so there was no "before" because time itself didn't exist yet and no matter because again it didn't exist yet. Because we exist within a closed reality of time and causality and matter and entropy we are subjectively rooted in the concepts of before and after and existence itself and the simple language that describes them, but like I said they didn't exist.

Now that's on our plane of existence, there could well be something outside of that that existed, or exists. Other universes, other dimensions, a sea of energy that gives rise to new singularities that become universes like our own. Some might be in the goldilocks zone so matter itself doesn't get blasted by antimatter milliseconds after the initial expansion and they go on to form stars and heavy elements and planets and maybe life. Others may be over in an instant or stay dark. Some might leak through into our universe like the heat of a fire through your neighbours wall. This might explain forces that might be stronger all things considered but aren't. Gravity as an example, or dark energy.

Still, the fact that a bunch of upright hairless apes on one rock spinning around a boring star can even begin to contemplate the nature of reality is bloody impressive. Which leads to my own mad idea. Namely that if you take the gaia principle operating on earth(that in effect the earth is a giant organism trying to run a balance and maybe creating at some stage a species that can leave and go elsewhere and "reproduce" itself) and expand that to the universal. Maybe a goldilocks universe will eventually give rise to at least one species that will be able to understand it down to the marrow and more, go on to create new baby universe singularities in the "lab" that go on in another plane of existence and create more compexity and life. Essentially we, that is intelligent life, may well be the reproductive system of the universe.

It sounds so reasonable, and revealing, and yet I simply cannot comprehend it. Bit like if you go to the edge of the Universe (why do I keep using capital 'U' ?), and stick your hand through the curtain, what's out there? "Oh ,nothing, Nick. Because as we all know, its called the Universe, because there simply nothing outside it, because there is NO outside". :eek::eek:

Yellow_Fern

emo72 wrote: »

Thank God there's an end. Who would like immortality thrust on them. after a couple of decades I'm about ready to check out anyway.

I dont think most old people want to die some do but pretty sure its a minority.

JasonStatham

The first law of thermodynamics says that energy can neither be created or destroyed.....basically how.can something come from nothing.

How can all matter just come into being at the Big Bang?

boardise

Upforthematch wrote: »

What's at the start of everything?

The letter 'e'

That's about all I know anyhow [/QUOTE

also at the beginning of 'entropy' .....and 'end' !

NickNickleby

JasonStatham wrote: »

The first law of thermodynamics says that energy can neither be created or destroyed.....basically how.can something come from nothing.

Its a while since I read the Stephen Hawking piece I referred to above, I'll dig it out and if small enough I'll quote it, otherwise I'll paraphrase it using my comparatively tiny mind. (that's the caveat )

Yellow_Fern

NickNickleby wrote: »

Ah, my depressing quip was a bit tongue in cheek, but for as long as I can remember, I thought the Universe would last forever, or would collapse back in on itself and then start all over again. Strangely, there was reassurance in the uncertainty. While watching the Brian Cox programme, I was struck by the thought that when I die my atoms will probably become part of the cosmic dust and be reconstituted as a plant on a new planet aeons from now. Well, apparently not .:pac::pac:

Yes, the Romans have gone, but have been replaced by the Americans, who in turn will probably be replaced by another Superpower as the 'leader' or world's policeman. When the Universe fizzles out, that's it......

However, there's still hope.

I read a piece by Stephen Hawking, in which he explains how he believes the Universe could have been created out of 'nothing' without the need for a God. Essentially there is evidence of particles jumping into existence and then disappearing (back to where they came from??) . And that's how the singularity might have appeared out of nowhere to become the Universe.

When they say nothing they mean a state that is pretty empty but still has something and the scenario requires that there are entirely different laws of physics. Ie physics demands that there is something.

bilbot79

JasonStatham wrote: »

The first law of thermodynamics says that energy can neither be created or destroyed.....basically how.can something come from nothing.

How can all matter just come into being at the Big Bang?

I'd say the big bang was just the result of the big crush, a perpetual cycle of expansion and compression. Would have loved Einstein to give some time to the chicken vs egg question.

boardise

Kylta wrote: »

OI think that some alien shot his load into a bucket of vomit and left it there. After so many heavy years (the opposite of light years) a sort if alien fungi thing grew and after more heavier years it developed into some sort of galaxy thing, after a substantial amount of spacial years well we came along.
So all of this galaxy was created by an alien having a **** into a bucket of puke.
The good news is the alien took a massive amount of heart attacks(he had 100 hearts and 15 dicks and a brain the size of a gnat) when he looked in the bucket and died. Thats why nobody out there knows we exist.
Again we're lucky if our alien forefather had lived we would be called pukespunk (actually a good name for a band) instead of human beings.
Our downfall will come when somebody develops alien bleach and decides to clean out the bucket

Makes everything 'pail' into insignificance .:)

NickNickleby

Yellow_Fern wrote: »

When they say nothing they mean a state that is pretty empty but still has something and the scenario requires that there are entirely different laws of physics. Ie physics demands that there is something.

So, is this like saying, something jumps into our existence from another existence and then jumps back again?
You can probably guess my next (rhetorical) question... "Where did THAT existence come from?" I'm not trying to be funny, I attempted to read the Stephen Hawking stuff with a view understand how the Universe might have been created, without the help of God.

Yellow_Fern

NickNickleby wrote: »

So, is this like saying, something jumps into our existence from another existence and then jumps back again?
You can probably guess my next (rhetorical) question... "Where did THAT existence come from?" I'm not trying to be funny, I attempted to read the Stephen Hawking stuff with a view understand how the Universe might have been created, without the help of God.

I get you. It is the question of questions! It is a question that had defeated the greatest minds. If were ancient Maya etc we could just say that the universal goes back forever but we can't because that would bend the laws of physics. Many physics say this but it is really just a guess.

Quantum Erasure

Our universe is just a random fluctuation from the normality of nothingness...

take everything wrote: »

Time is just a psychological construct to account for change of stuff around us.

Although, if you follow that reasoning, everything is ultimately a psychological construct. Space and its dimensions are just psychological constructs as well.

If we weren't here, there still would be 'space' dimensions, and there still would be the time dimension as well, and it would still tick along at it's own unstoppable rate

Yellow_Fern

Quantum Erasure wrote: »

Our universe is just a random fluctuation from the normality of nothingness...

If we weren't here, there still would be 'space' dimensions, and there still would be the time dimension as well, and it would still tick along at it's own unstoppable rate

The problem is it is untestable and unprovable and thus well outside the scientific method.

JasonStatham

bilbot79 wrote: »

I'd say the big bang was just the result of the big crush, a perpetual cycle of expansion and compression. Would have loved Einstein to give some time to the chicken vs egg question.

I'd seen that theory as well. It sounds more reasonable, but the question for me is, what started the cycle. I think that's what this thread might be getting At. Now I could be well wrong haha.

take everything

Quantum Erasure wrote: »

Our universe is just a random fluctuation from the normality of nothingness...

If we weren't here, there still would be 'space' dimensions, and there still would be the time dimension as well, and it would still tick along at it's own unstoppable rate

I can't think of anything that says that space and dimensions objectively exist outside of our experience. Testing something like that always involves the tester.