The Universe Could End In 2.8 Billion Years

Megalith

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This is just a heads up so you guys can get your things in order in time before the universe rips itself apart.

Observations of stars and galaxies indicate that the universe is expanding, and at an increasing rate. Assuming that acceleration stays constant, eventually the stars will die out, everything will drift apart, and the universe will cool into an eternal “heat death”. But that’s not the only possibility. The acceleration is thought to be due to dark energy, mysterious stuff that permeates the entire universe. If the total amount of dark energy is increasing, the acceleration will also increase, eventually to the point where the very fabric of space-time tears itself apart and the cosmos pops out of existence.
 
Silly mathematicians, pretending that they're scientists with all their fancy equations :D
 
so the planets now have no mass... why are these people calling them scientists if they can not even understand the scientific process. you start with what you know, not what you think, but what you can be certain happened yesterday and will happen tomorrow. yes I know the joke about tomorrow never getting here that it is always today, but one the first thing is we know that you drop something inside planetary envelope that it continues to accelerate at set rate because of friction slowing it down... the planets are spinning around something because we can put a shuttle in orbit and see that over the course of year... something is thus causing the angular motion of the planet to be higher than that of escape velocity of the solar system... if everything is being thrown outward at an accelerating amount then something is continuing to provide more force otherwise they are moving at a constant speed.
the scientific process would stop at not being able to measure the speed of the solar bodies moving in any direction. because as long as you can not confirm that what you are seeing is more than plastic film with holes in it, you are assuming too many things based on a couple million dots of light.
 
Who wants to make s'mores and have a philosophical debate over entropy?

Actually, I don't even like marshmallows.

Or chocolate....
 
Shit, I don't think my pension will last that long.....have to start selling weed.
 
And these same "scientists" will not be here in 2.8 billion years so they could make up whatever crap they want to... and they have only been on this planet for a paltry amount of time so unless they know somebody who is either a time traveler who has gone back in the distant past and into the distant future they have absolutely no way of knowing what is going to happen.
 
I love professional sceptics when they start heaving insults because reading and research are too hard. This was a teaching exercise in using varied models to predict an array of results. When they moved the models to the absolute extreme edge of theoretical possibility they got this 1.2X result. Insulting a few professors for teaching their students about process and then using your own wilful ignorance to insult the scientific community at large is well... It's typical...
 
And these same "scientists" will not be here in 2.8 billion years so they could make up whatever crap they want to... and they have only been on this planet for a paltry amount of time so unless they know somebody who is either a time traveler who has gone back in the distant past and into the distant future they have absolutely no way of knowing what is going to happen.
Bro do you even science?
 
Something is causing the universal neighborhood to go to hell and they call it 'Dark'. Isn't that racist?
 
It's kind of interesting to hear these theories of how the universe works, but it's also hard for me to get that invested in them as there sure is a lot of conjecture and had waving.

It is nice to have some people here on earth that like to think about such things though and listen to what they come up with.
 
So where does GOD come into play on this? Afterall God made everything did they forgot that GOD might have a plan for all of us Humans?
 
Have they found dark matter or dark energy yet?
If not, the theory is baseless

That is a strong statement, the theory of heat death itself isn't baseless, and the 2.8 Billion years is just a guestimate and a 'not for at least' estimate at that. Heat death is actually one of the more feasible ways in which the universe could end.

Are you for real? There is no invisible, omnipotent cloud being. Sorry.

This always amuses me, to be so certain about something humans absolutely cannot be certain about (at least with current technology) always blows my mind. It is as narrow minded as the religious side. We don't actually know for certain if any 'creator' type being actually exists, or what shape or form such an entity would take. I personally keep an open mind to both spiritualism and science, until something is factually proven all options exist. Heck, sometimes when something is factually proven, it can be debunked later, I'm looking at you Quantum Physics.
 
This always amuses me, to be so certain about something humans absolutely cannot be certain about (at least with current technology) always blows my mind. It is as narrow minded as the religious side. We don't actually know for certain if any 'creator' type being actually exists, or what shape or form such an entity would take. I personally keep an open mind to both spiritualism and science, until something is factually proven all options exist. Heck, sometimes when something is factually proven, it can be debunked later, I'm looking at you Quantum Physics.
"Teacup in orbit."

Regarding the absolute certainty of no god, atheism doesn't make the claim; the claims by theists without evidence are simply dismissed. What is spiritualism as you've alluded? I will also say atheists have a slight edge here - there isn't wishful thinking. Is death disliked, sure. Is the ever-growing pile of evidence pointing to an entropic heat death of the universe disliked, most probably. Do I require consolation of an after-life where everyone meets again? Absolutely not.
 
And these same "scientists" will not be here in 2.8 billion years so they could make up whatever crap they want to... and they have only been on this planet for a paltry amount of time so unless they know somebody who is either a time traveler who has gone back in the distant past and into the distant future they have absolutely no way of knowing what is going to happen.

i smell a creationist. "you weren't alive when dinosaurs were alive so how can you be sure they existed?!"
 
Cool, so I still have time to read every [H]ard post. ;)
This always amuses me, to be so certain about something humans absolutely cannot be certain about (at least with current technology) always blows my mind. It is as narrow minded as the religious side. We don't actually know for certain if any 'creator' type being actually exists, or what shape or form such an entity would take. I personally keep an open mind to both spiritualism and science, until something is factually proven all options exist. Heck, sometimes when something is factually proven, it can be debunked later, I'm looking at you Quantum Physics.
Feel the same way. IMO, there is no such thing as an atheist. Every atheist is really an agnostic. You know damned well if a supreme being ever materialized before you, that "atheist" would start believing.
 
Cool, so I still have time to read every [H]ard post. ;)

Feel the same way. IMO, there is no such thing as an atheist. Every atheist is really an agnostic. You know damned well if a supreme being ever materialized before you, that "atheist" would start believing.

Well, I think that is the defining attribute of an atheist: "Show me proof"

Kind of like how scientists look at data: "Can you observe it? Can you theoretically perform any kind of experiment to determine its effects or have it noticeably influence reality in any way? If not: it is not scientifically relevant." That goes for gods, other dimensions, ghosts... anything that simply can't be observed or has NO way of being relevant in an experiment. If that ever changes: it becomes scientifically relevant.
 
"Teacup in orbit."

Regarding the absolute certainty of no god, atheism doesn't make the claim; the claims by theists without evidence are simply dismissed. What is spiritualism as you've alluded? I will also say atheists have a slight edge here - there isn't wishful thinking. Is death disliked, sure. Is the ever-growing pile of evidence pointing to an entropic heat death of the universe disliked, most probably. Do I require consolation of an after-life where everyone meets again? Absolutely not.
When the claims of theists are dismissed by decree, atheists are making the claim of on god.
 
"Teacup in orbit."

Regarding the absolute certainty of no god, atheism doesn't make the claim; the claims by theists without evidence are simply dismissed. What is spiritualism as you've alluded? I will also say atheists have a slight edge here - there isn't wishful thinking. Is death disliked, sure. Is the ever-growing pile of evidence pointing to an entropic heat death of the universe disliked, most probably. Do I require consolation of an after-life where everyone meets again? Absolutely not.

Spiritualism as in the spiritual experience that humans are capable of, mostly relating to the release of positive or negative hormones and chemicals within the body to create various altered states of consciousness. People interpret these events in different ways, and assign them different meanings. There is growing research into the impact that consciousness has on the world around us, and some of the initial findings are interesting.

Many will say that this is all in someones head, but so where planes, trains and automobiles. We have a will and an impact on the world that is undeniable, I must personally make room for that.

Still I prefer to approach it from a scientific viewpoint, and by that I mean that everything is a theory until disproved, not proved.
 
The story is a little misleading.

Locally gravity bound items would still stay bound, only non-bound objects would accelerate away. So the Milky Way would still be the Milky Way even after "the big rip". What this is referring to is the redshift of galaxies. Basically if this hypothesis is true, and follows the worst case, in 2.8 billion years the sky will be empty other than stars in the Milky Way, as well as our local group which includes Andromeda galaxy and some other smaller galaxies.

Everything else will be moving so fast away from us that the light is redshifted to the far IR range where our eyes can't see it. IR telescopes will still detect it for a time, until everything moves fast enough where there will be no detection. The stuff is still out there, we just won't see it.
 
Spiritualism as in the spiritual experience that humans are capable of, mostly relating to the release of positive or negative hormones and chemicals within the body to create various altered states of consciousness. People interpret these events in different ways, and assign them different meanings. There is growing research into the impact that consciousness has on the world around us, and some of the initial findings are interesting.

Many will say that this is all in someones head, but so where planes, trains and automobiles. We have a will and an impact on the world that is undeniable, I must personally make room for that.

Still I prefer to approach it from a scientific viewpoint, and by that I mean that everything is a theory until disproved, not proved.

Wrong. A scientific theory is something that explains how and why things happen, and has large amounts of evidence backing it up. You cannot put out a scientific theory and then say "Prove me wrong, otherwise my theory stands." It doesn't work that way. You can put out a hypothesis, and then work on trying to disprove the hypothesis, but a hypothesis carries nowhere near the same kind of weight as a scientific theory.

If you're going to approach something with a scientific viewpoint, you better make sure you know how science works. And for that matter, you will need to make sure you know how statistics works as well, since statistics is a major part of proving/disproving hypotheses. Double blind test, statistical significance, confidence intervals, etc.
 
Wrong. A scientific theory is something that explains how and why things happen, and has large amounts of evidence backing it up. You cannot put out a scientific theory and then say "Prove me wrong, otherwise my theory stands." It doesn't work that way. You can put out a hypothesis, and then work on trying to disprove the hypothesis, but a hypothesis carries nowhere near the same kind of weight as a scientific theory.

If you're going to approach something with a scientific viewpoint, you better make sure you know how science works. And for that matter, you will need to make sure you know how statistics works as well, since statistics is a major part of proving/disproving hypotheses. Double blind test, statistical significance, confidence intervals, etc.

What? Where am I wrong? All I said is I make room for it and there are some interesting initial findings. You seem to have taken umbrage with this, questioned my understanding of science and than statistics.

So, you've proved nothing other than you have a basic understanding of theory, hypothesis and maybe the scientific method. Not once did I say prove me wrong or my theory stands. Stop straw manning, its a horrific disease.
 
What? Where am I wrong? All I said is I make room for it and there are some interesting initial findings. You seem to have taken umbrage with this, questioned my understanding of science and than statistics.

So, you've proved nothing other than you have a basic understanding of theory, hypothesis and maybe the scientific method. Not once did I say prove me wrong or my theory stands. Stop straw manning, its a horrific disease.

I mean that everything is a theory until disproved, not proved.

Your type is so quick to accuse others of straw manning. It's pathetic when it's the only defense you can come up with. Play the victim all you want, it will not make you a victim.
 
And these same "scientists" will not be here in 2.8 billion years so they could make up whatever crap they want to... and they have only been on this planet for a paltry amount of time so unless they know somebody who is either a time traveler who has gone back in the distant past and into the distant future they have absolutely no way of knowing what is going to happen.
Yeah it's better to dwell in ignorance and ridicule anyone who tries to find answers.
 
Your type is so quick to accuse others of straw manning. It's pathetic when it's the only defense you can come up with. Play the victim all you want, it will not make you a victim.

So much hostility, you purpose built an argument to knock down without addressing the comment as a whole, and you put words in my mouth that I never said, then when caught you pull out a single sentence to justify your man, but fine fair enough.

A theory is a theory until disproved. Science is all about observation, leading to hypothesis, testing the hypothesis by attempting to make it fail, if the hypothesis stands up to enough testing (preponderance of evidence) then it can become a scientific theory.

Theories are not fool proof. We do not stop testing theories nor should we. A single failure will not likely discard the theory, such as Newtonian Physics utterly failing on a quantum level. To my knowledge we still cannot reconcile Newtonian to Quantum physics. Both theories could be wrong, but they are the best guess we have at how things work.

A Scientific Theory is not a Scientific Law.

What is a Scientific Theory?
 
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