Entropy - does it bother you?

Upforthematch · 27-07-2020 10:00pm #1

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 · 27-07-2020 10:07pm

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 · 27-07-2020 10:12pm

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 · 27-07-2020 10:19pm

its turtles .. all the way down

bucketybuck · 27-07-2020 10:19pm

It bothers me less as time goes on.

Upforthematch · 27-07-2020 10:24pm

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 · 27-07-2020 10:30pm

One day the sun is going to go out.

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

y0ssar1an22 · 27-07-2020 10:35pm

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

Upforthematch · 27-07-2020 10:39pm

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 · 27-07-2020 10:40pm

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 · 27-07-2020 10:43pm

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 · 27-07-2020 10:51pm

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 · 27-07-2020 11:03pm

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 · 27-07-2020 11:07pm

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 · 27-07-2020 11:10pm

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 · 27-07-2020 11:13pm

Universe Tends Toward Disorder

second law of thermodynamics.

so theres no point tidying up

Junkyard Tom · 27-07-2020 11:13pm

Upforthematch wrote: »

I believe that God did

amadangomor · 27-07-2020 11:15pm

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 · 28-07-2020 12:16am

Time bothers me more...

Like, why?

Mr_Muffin · 28-07-2020 12:19am

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

Upforthematch · 28-07-2020 12:20am

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 · 28-07-2020 12:21am

celtic_oz wrote: »

its turtles .. all the way down

De Chelonian Mobile!

emo72 · 28-07-2020 12:26am

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 · 28-07-2020 12:41am

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.

28-07-2020 12:59am

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 · 28-07-2020 7:30pm

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 · 28-07-2020 7:48pm

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 · 28-07-2020 7:51pm

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

NickNickleby · 28-07-2020 8:10pm

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 · 28-07-2020 8:14pm

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 · 28-07-2020 8:31pm

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.

Entropy - does it bother you?

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