19 replies to this topic

[PaulH]

I'm a big beliver that anything is possible and that with sufficient time and intelligent anything can be solved - I have fondly referred to this as the Sans Ceiling Hypothesis since 1998.

Well if this article is correct, then we have a lot less time to figure out those pesky loopholes to runaway cosmological expansion - The Big Rip.

Original Article

PARIS - The bad news: The universe will end in a runaway expansion so violent that galaxies and planets will be torn apart and individual atoms of human flesh will be ripped asunder in the tiniest fraction of a second.

The good news: You can go ahead and book your summer holiday. It won't happen for another 22 billion years.

Mr Robert Caldwell, a physicist at Dartmouth College in the United States, says the doomsday scenario inverts the widespread belief that the cosmos will end with a whimper.

'Until now, we thought the universe would either re-collapse to a big crunch or expand forever to a state of dilution,' he told the British weekly New Scientist.

'Now we've come up with a third possibility - the Big Rip.'

The universe is famously believed to have been born in a 'Big Bang' 12 to 14 billions years ago and has been expanding ever since, driven by a mysterious force known as dark energy.

Most scientists believe that the acceleration will eventually weaken, or at least stay constant.

But according to Mr Caldwell's theory, the dark energy may be becoming more powerful, essentially acting as a foot on the expansion accelerator.

The universe would be stretched further and further away, until the light of the stars could not reach us. Eventually, phantom energy would tear apart all bound systems, sundering the electrical bonds that hold matter together.

In the most extreme scenario, the 'Big Rip' would happen 22 billion years from now, with the Milky Way destroyed 60 million years before the universe's very end.

'In the last moments, even atomic nuclei will be ripped apart,' Mr Caldwell told the New Scientist. --AFP

Edited by planetp, 10 March 2003 - 04:34 PM.

[Lazarus Long]

Oooooohh and here I thought we had to worry about alternatively being just frozen and cooked like a Baked Alaska. This sounds positively sensual for a destructive catharis, almost an orgasmic cosmos.

Shades of James Blish's scenario in the Cities in Flight novels. [ph34r]

[PaulH]

This sounds positively sensual for a destructive catharis, almost an orgasmic cosmos.

Who would have thought that the ultimate orgasm would be the death of us all! lol. Leave it up to physicists like Tipler to figure a way to survive it. Of course, if this theory is correct, Tipler has some major revisions in order.

Edited by planetp, 10 March 2003 - 05:34 PM.

[Cyto]

I'm confident that some group of energy-shield gurus (or something like that [ggg]) will think of something if this threat is real. Course I can't speculate as to where we may be in ~22 billion.

[advancedatheist]

I think we have a more immediate problem: Earth's magnetic field is weakening, probably going to zero within 1,000 years. Oh, it will probably start up again, with the opposite polarity. But nobody knows how long that will take, nor how well human civilization would fare without a magnetic shield against cosmic rays.

One scientist thinks the shutdown could happen quite suddenly because the field is generated by a five-mile-wide natural uranium reactor in Earth's core. This reactor generates fission byproducts which from time to time collect to the point where they shut down the reaction. The byproducts then rise out of the core, being less dense than uranium, until the remaining stuff reaches critical mass and the chain reaction resumes :

http://www.discover....featplanet.html

Edited by advancedatheist, 11 March 2003 - 04:14 AM.

[Cyto]

Looks like Im going to have to work on sensitive error protection then, after a stem cell injection. Thanks for the news.

Edited by XxDoubleHelixX, 11 March 2003 - 04:38 AM.

[Mind]

But according to Mr Caldwell's theory, the dark energy may be becoming more powerful, essentially acting as a foot on the expansion accelerator.

I dicussed this with BJ in another thread. This leads more credibility to my thoughts on the topic. Dark energy is increasing - causing an acceleration of the universe - meaning the universe is gaining energy. Thus as long as we can find a way to harness dark energy in the future we should never have to worry about the big whimper or big rip. There will always be energy for us to exploit for intelligent purposes.

[Mind]

I think we have a more immediate problem: Earth's magnetic field is weakening, probably going to zero within 1,000 years. Oh, it will probably start up again, with the opposite polarity. But nobody knows how long that will take, nor how well human civilization would fare without a magnetic shield against cosmic rays.

This would be a problem if it goes to zero within the next 30 years. After that, I fully expect to be a cyborg with more mechanical parts than biological (and more energy from the sun might and cosmos may even be helpful).

Also, even if we do not transhumanize, I am willing to bet we would survive. It might be tough, but we would make it. I base this optimism on the fact that the magnetic field has been reversing fairly regularly over the last few million years and it hasn't stopped life on this planet yet.

[bgwowk]

The Big Rip scenario was ruled out by recent measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation. It now looks more like a rush toward cold darkness.

Cosmology has changed so much in the last 10 years that it would be foolish to believe that all important information is now known. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. It's silly to worry about physical eschatology as though it's personally relevant.

[forever freedom]

in 22 billion years.... i got a feeling that a "big rip" wont be a problem to us by then

[Cyberbrain]

Guys, guys… calm down. Regardless of the fate of the universe whether it being a closed or open universe (heat death and the big rip), there is still hope for physical immortality.

Aside from what the world of quantum physics tells us with infinite parallel universe and aside from the omega point theory by Tipler … if we reach the singularity in the next few decades … then intelligence will increase exponentially and by 22 billion years from now not only am I confident that our vast levels of computations will enable us to find a way to reverse entropy but I am also confident that we will find ways to save the universe itself by cosmic engineering.

So calm down … there is still hope for physical immortality.

[Live Forever]

If I could guarantee I would be around in 22 billion years, I wouldn't be too broken up about the fact that was going to be the end of things.

[AdamSummerfield]

By that time, if we are still around, there is always the possibility of using technology to travel into another universe safely, this however, may be problematic because the destined universe will have different laws to ours, existing in it may kill us. Or alternatively create a universe with identical laws to our own, then travel into it. Safely. Let's wait and see.

[Luna]

Well if we get enough energy we can stable this one.

[Liquidus]

For every problem, there is a solution (and usually multiple ones). Even if this theory happens to come true, at that point in time, there should be a very logical solution to the issue, it's obvious that there's no way our brains can truly process or anticipate what would work that far into the future given the nature of the problem (obliteration of all known existence throughout the universe).

Interesting theory either way. In 22 Billion years, a couple of hundread of asteroids/meteors will have hit the earth (unless mankind intevenes). If anything, I would be more concerned with things randomly being launched towards the earth than some theoretical concept of the end of time.

If there is only a singular universe that spans to infinite bounds, who's to say that by finding the center point (of which all matter surrounds, and likely the source of the start of the destruction process), you could travel so far outwards from the center that the center would have no impact or relevance on your position since you wouldn't be close to it. I mean that's one of the very primitive options to look at, and I'm sure hundreds of them could easily be formulated even 22 Billion years before anything happens.

[Luna]

We'll be long gone from Earth to another planet.
And anyways as said the big rip seems to be false by the observasions.
And I'm pretty sure that the cold death is untrue either. the universe will probably surprise us with showing us how stable and self caring it is.
No much reason to worry.
And you ust remember, before matter came to the universe, there must have been "nothing".
Observasions suggest the universe is infinite, matter is finite.
That's why I belive in zpe so much.

[AdamSummerfield]

Observations that the universe is expanding show that the universe is finite.
However, the general consensus among physicists these days is that it is boundaryless. It is believed that space is like the 2-dimensional surface of a sphere, yet space as we see it has 3 enlarged spacial dimensions.
Taken into account, the 2-dimensional surface of a sphere is on a 3-dimensional sphere. It may be difficult to imagine, but the universe has been described as a 4-dimensional (spacial, enlarged - not related to the Calabi-Yau) sphere, its surface is 3-dimensional. Thus, as you travel in outer space, up, down, left, right, back and forth, you are on the surface of a 4-d sphere. This makes the universe seem boundaryless.

- Sezarus