Heat death of the universe

[MyGhastIsFlabbered]

Watching the lovely Brian Cox and he was talking about heat death of the universe...as I understood it it means that at some point in time (billions and billions of years in the future) all the stars in the universe will have used up their fuel and will essentially go out. Every single star.

I can't explain why but this idea fills me with absolute horror, it actually makes me go cold. I don't know why, because it's so far in the future I certainly don't need to worry about it. But I can't stop thinking about it. And hoping it's not going to happen. I just can't imagine a 'dead' universe.

We maybe if the universe is contracting perhaps this will counteract the heat loss through used up fuel?

I like this thread. It's like when I try and read new scientist and have to stop for a lie down.

It's impossible to imagine nothingness.

But look at it another way, how truly amazing and precious life is.

You should read Sapiens - History of Humankind by Huval Harari. That's another interesting one.

I quite liked Asimov's short story on this theme - full text here:

www.multivax.com/last_question.html

I like being alive too. I actually find it so sad that I will end. I want to see what The world will be like in a few hundred years, whether we’ll manage space travel to distant stars and whether we’ll discover life elsewhere. Or if they discover us.

Thanks for the Asimov text. Bed time reading for me

We maybe if the universe is contracting perhaps this will counteract the heat loss through used up fuel?

But it isn't contracting. It's expanding. And appearing to accelerate too, although no one knows where the energy is coming from.

If my understanding of "dark energy" is correct ?

OP, if it helps, I think about WHY we find these ideas sad and stressful. I think because the physics plays on very human concerns. We don't want to be alone; we don't want to be forgotten. When you are scared by the end of being, of the universe ending (which obviously is irrelevant to your life), try relating it to yourself - 'I am scared of being alone. I am scared of never being known'. I find that much easier to conceptualise and to soothe.

I saw this (I think, I think it's a repeat from several years ago) where Prof. Brian Cox was talking about how there would be absolutely nothing left. That weekend, it was featured on TV Burp and Harry Hill was having a party with cake, party poppers and those whistle things that uncurl as you blow out. The clip about the end of the universe played and Harry's party was ruined.

Thinking about things like this, the enormity of the universe and the theory that eventually there will be nothing left, do make me feel a bit like, "What's the point in being here now? We all run around on this treadmill of life and ultimately it's pointless. Why do we bother?" Then I remember that Harry Hill thing, smile and think that whilst it is all going to end eventually, we might as well smile and laugh anyway because there isn't a damned thing we can do about it.

Even black holes will eventually dis6 due to Hawking radiation. In the far distant universe, the flash of energy as the last black holes evaporate will be the only light in the unending darkness.

In billions of years time we'll have found a new galaxy to inhabit.

This piece of text from Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus is fitting:

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Maybe start going to Church OP lol. Then your soul won't be damned for all eternity

And more from the same text

The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond.

Full text here

I think physics experts are mere insects trying to understand what makes the baby's rattle make noise at this point. They are eons of light-years away from understanding life.

We have a concept of time, but time doesn't really exist, only as it exists as a concept for us to understand night and day.

I really wouldn't worry about it OP.

But bless their little hearts for trying....

Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there
Possibly one of the most ridiculous, half witted statements I have ever read.

How patronising can you get. If anyone is aware how limited our viewpoint is it's the scientists trying to extrapolate the workings of a vast universe from our little pinhole camera perspective.

Don't pretend that human imagination is more profound than reality. Art (in the widest sense - words, material and sound) is beautiful and interesting - it's about the interaction between human minds and the world. Human minds are fascinating and complex. Intelligent life, the capacity to sit here and say, I'm bored, entertain me; educate me; how does it all work; what are the rules? What this individual organism's brain perceives as beautiful, including words and imaginations, is a small perspective not a wide perspective. I have great respect for those chipping away to give us even the slightest glimpse of what the wide perspective looks like.

There’s a sort of necessary humility in accepting we are not infinite as a species.

No it won’t. New stars are born as often as old ones die out. You have super novas creating gas nebulae that then become a nursery for new stars. You can change matter into energy and vice versa but no energy is lost ever. Which is why the universe will not snuff out like a burned out candle.

Even each black hole sucks matter in, but ejects it out the other end via a white hole. It doesn’t just disappear.

Now, our galaxy might die out. But never the entire universe.

I get a horrible feeling when I imagine time going on forever and me just not existing. It makes me feel a bit sick. I have to stop thinking about it.

Ach, the people that used to hypothesise that the world was flat were the Brian Coxes of their day. In years to come archaeologists will pore over his books and think “ah well, he was a bit right.

I admire scientists and theorists like him but the universe is so vast our understanding of it is like knowing nothing except how to count to ten and thinking you’re an expert intellect.

I try not to think about it all too much as it does addle my brain. Doesn’t help my menopausal anxiety either, realising that I’m just a meaningless speck.

I think everything will turn to lead (the symbol Pb being from the Latin PLUMBUM; isn’t that wonderful?).

So with all the fusion of hydrogen to helium and onwards/upwards through the periodic table, and all the fission and subsequent nuclear decay of the higher unstable elements, it all goes back to lead.

It will be used for tiling the roof of a great celestial church where the souls of we sinners will spend a rather boring eternity.

(Based on my ponderances and involving not much knowledge/science.)

"No it won’t. New stars are born as often as old ones die out. You have super novas creating gas nebulae that then become a nursery for new stars. You can change matter into energy and vice versa but no energy is lost ever. Which is why the universe will not snuff out like a burned out candle.

Even each black hole sucks matter in, but ejects it out the other end via a white hole. It doesn’t just disappear.

Now, our galaxy might die out. But never the entire universe."

That statement is almost completely wrong. There is no evidence to support the existence of white holes. Super Novae do create heavier elements found in population ii stars, but there is limited amount of hydrogen available to create new stars.
New star formation will start to slow in around a trillion years. Eventually the only stars left shining will be long lived red dwarfs.