Hola Jim. We live on a small farm. Our kids have grown up observing the circle of life. A few years ago they helped me bury a particularly beloved dog - a sad effort prolonged because it occurred in the dead of winter. We had to use the backhoe to dig in frozen ground. Because of this, and because we are not religious, they have a practical and I believe useful view of it all - one day you're going to be dead a long time. When they ask about an afterlife I tell them that I think that discrepancies in the Hubble Constant have me convinced that the expansion of the Universe is not infinite and we are headed, instead, for another Big Bang in a few hundred billion years. Then the world starts again. No such thing as goodbye, just until we meet again. It makes at least as much sense as most religious views and what the hell, it might actually be true.
I thought the latest calculations showed the universe would expand forever, dying as the last matter decayed into photons, traveling with ever lower energy until the entire universe was an empty, massless void hovering just a tenth of a degree above 0 Kelvin?
Anyway, I was without religion for awhile - but decided that the idea that we have this incredible universe for no good reason actually made less sense than having an infinite being who brought it about. Either way, thinking too carefully about it makes my head hurt. ;-)
I also cannot fathom a universe where a consciousness could simply cease to exist. Perhaps I am wrong, and if so, then there probably is no God - because I don't believe any God could be so cruel as to bring consciousness into being only to snuff it out.
So I have a strong hunch that when my time comes, if I have lived a good life - and I am trying - my departed cats will be waiting for me.
You are talking about a "cold death" to the universe. An infinitely large universe with a finite amount of energy is dark and cold. I haven't taught astrophysics for a few years, but the last time I checked the data is all over the place. Until we figure out dark matter/energy, that probably won't change. Cheers
I'm not convinced that dark matter / energy isn't another dead end, like string theory. I was reading Lee Smolin, and he was thinking out loud that it is possible we're missing something fundamental here: That may we don't understand gravity as well as we should, or maybe it's not consistent over distance or time. Anyway, the LHC didn't find most of what they were hoping to find, so I'm not optimistic that we're on the right path in our research currently.
Dark matter/energy isn't of interest because there's much evidence that it actually exists, it's of interest because it solves a gigantic problem in cosmology. In physics we've spent a century conjuring things right out of the ether because their existence would fill some niche and solve a problem. Then we conducted experiments to find what we were looking for. Most of The Standard Model was determined that way. Its just lately that MO has started coming up short. The reason that I chose gravity as an example in my last rant is because it's well understood - probably more than any other fundamental force. Especially on the cosmological scale, where it's significant. It also fits well with General Relativity. Gravity runs into issues on a quantum scale. I don't know why the Universe is expanding at an inexplicable rate. I just kow that neither does anyone else.
String theory solved - seemingly - a whole host of problems mathematically. Ultimately, it has proven a dead end though. (As one cosmologist put it, "It solves everything but predicts nothing.")
I'm still intrigued by the possibility that Smolin put forth that it's possible that we are grossly misinterpreting what we see - that there is something else that accounts for what seems to be the accelerating expansion.
Doubt any of it will get sorted out in our lifetimes, though.
Hola Jim. We live on a small farm. Our kids have grown up observing the circle of life. A few years ago they helped me bury a particularly beloved dog - a sad effort prolonged because it occurred in the dead of winter. We had to use the backhoe to dig in frozen ground. Because of this, and because we are not religious, they have a practical and I believe useful view of it all - one day you're going to be dead a long time. When they ask about an afterlife I tell them that I think that discrepancies in the Hubble Constant have me convinced that the expansion of the Universe is not infinite and we are headed, instead, for another Big Bang in a few hundred billion years. Then the world starts again. No such thing as goodbye, just until we meet again. It makes at least as much sense as most religious views and what the hell, it might actually be true.
I thought the latest calculations showed the universe would expand forever, dying as the last matter decayed into photons, traveling with ever lower energy until the entire universe was an empty, massless void hovering just a tenth of a degree above 0 Kelvin?
Anyway, I was without religion for awhile - but decided that the idea that we have this incredible universe for no good reason actually made less sense than having an infinite being who brought it about. Either way, thinking too carefully about it makes my head hurt. ;-)
I also cannot fathom a universe where a consciousness could simply cease to exist. Perhaps I am wrong, and if so, then there probably is no God - because I don't believe any God could be so cruel as to bring consciousness into being only to snuff it out.
So I have a strong hunch that when my time comes, if I have lived a good life - and I am trying - my departed cats will be waiting for me.
You are talking about a "cold death" to the universe. An infinitely large universe with a finite amount of energy is dark and cold. I haven't taught astrophysics for a few years, but the last time I checked the data is all over the place. Until we figure out dark matter/energy, that probably won't change. Cheers
I'm not convinced that dark matter / energy isn't another dead end, like string theory. I was reading Lee Smolin, and he was thinking out loud that it is possible we're missing something fundamental here: That may we don't understand gravity as well as we should, or maybe it's not consistent over distance or time. Anyway, the LHC didn't find most of what they were hoping to find, so I'm not optimistic that we're on the right path in our research currently.
Dark matter/energy isn't of interest because there's much evidence that it actually exists, it's of interest because it solves a gigantic problem in cosmology. In physics we've spent a century conjuring things right out of the ether because their existence would fill some niche and solve a problem. Then we conducted experiments to find what we were looking for. Most of The Standard Model was determined that way. Its just lately that MO has started coming up short. The reason that I chose gravity as an example in my last rant is because it's well understood - probably more than any other fundamental force. Especially on the cosmological scale, where it's significant. It also fits well with General Relativity. Gravity runs into issues on a quantum scale. I don't know why the Universe is expanding at an inexplicable rate. I just kow that neither does anyone else.
String theory solved - seemingly - a whole host of problems mathematically. Ultimately, it has proven a dead end though. (As one cosmologist put it, "It solves everything but predicts nothing.")
I'm still intrigued by the possibility that Smolin put forth that it's possible that we are grossly misinterpreting what we see - that there is something else that accounts for what seems to be the accelerating expansion.
Doubt any of it will get sorted out in our lifetimes, though.
What no Crown Royal!
I hope you took all the booze when you moved out.
🥹