nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Child Item

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?

Find more posts tagged with

Quick Links

Comments

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. ðŸ˜€

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.

nj27

Don't worry, you might already be a Boltzmann brain.

Ipso

Was it big and was it a bang?

cosanostra

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.

It was once explained to me that imagine we are inside an ever expanding balloon however there's nothing outside the balloon. The big mind f*ck is our inability to understand nothingness how can there be nothing or if its infinite the only way we can picture it is with an end its just something our brains cant visualise

[Deleted User]

Life itself consists of complex self-sustaining systems, highly organised from the smallest scales up, which are capable of resisting entropy for a finite time period, powered ultimately by energy from the sun (mostly) and the small fraction of matter on the planet at any moment capable of being assimilated into the organism from it's environment. It is the nature of existence that everything 'wants' to become as disordered as possible. We are facing a major crisis into the future regarding energy, as our species has been relying on a one-off boon of fossil fuels which took forever to accumulate but which we will have used up in centuries. Energy, space and raw materials are of the most fundamental importance for our species in the eternal battle against entropy but it will be too late before we realise there will never be a better source of energy than fossil fuels and that we should have done whatever was necessary as a species to ration them out longer.

With regard to the heat death of the universe and the eternity that is theorized to be due to follow the death of the stars; I once read that something like 98 percent (high nineties anyway) of all stars that will ever form have already existed or exist. This to me is a satisfying conclusion when you consider how spookily young the universe seems to be in comparison with the grotesquely immense timescales that are discussed in relation to the situation in far future of the universe. It seems life is something that can only exist in the first tens of billions of years of the universe at best, which is a blink in comparison with the near-eternity that seems to lie beyond that.

The Tetrarch

y0ssar1an22 wrote: »

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

I'll put your mind at rest.
Someone asked "What does this button do?"
Before that, I'm not sure.

Kerry4Gold

take everything wrote: »

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

Well my mind has been successfully blown. I've never considered looking at it this way, is there a name for this way of thinking about the problem, or is this an original perspective?

take everything

Kerry4Gold wrote: »

Well my mind has been successfully blown. I've never considered looking at it this way, is there a name for this way of thinking about the problem, or is this an original perspective?

Nah, not original.

Have a look at something like Linear algebra, a maths subject that deals with spaces of dimensions that can be anything, not just spatial.

So for example 3 spatial dimensions, one time, one colour, one temperature say. Or anything really.

And then you can describe states of a physical system in terms of say these 6 parameters (I'm just picking any parameters).

I suppose my relegation of spatial dimension might be controversial but ultimately these are all things that we perceive (heat, colour, direction, time) so I'm compelled to think these things they all have in common is an observer.

They don't really exist in any meaningful way arguably if there's no observer.

A question I always have is what exactly is rotation through space or an angle. Interestingly angles are measured in radians which are distance/distance (so dimensionless), something I always puzzle about. Distance has a dimension but angles don't. The concept of spatial dimension fascinates me.

Why do we observe three dimensions.
Etc etc.

jimgoose

We sail through endless skies
Stars shine like eyes
The black night sighs
The moon in silver trees
Falls down in tears
Light of the night
The earth, a purple blaze
Of sapphire haze
In orbit always

-- Osbourne/Butler/Iommi/Ward

Quantum Erasure

Ipso wrote: »

Was it big and was it a bang?

Quite the opposite in fact, although I suppose everything is relative, it was bigger and bangier than what was there before....

kowloon

Meh, vaccum decay or someone spilling their coffee on the server that runs reality V2.0 might end us all tomorrow. The important thing to remember is you're tiny and insignificant in an uncaring universe and you can murder and pillage as much as your heart desires without any fear of consequence beyond death.

I'm feeling very nihilistic because I fcuked up putting a screen protector on a new tablet and now there's bubbles. Literally the worst thing ever to happen ever.