Galactic Survey: The Universe Dying as Old Stars Fade Faster Than New Ones Are Born 199
astroengine writes: A study of more than 200,000 galaxies, encompassing wavelengths of light from the far ultraviolet to infrared, shows that the universe is producing half as much energy as it did 2 billion years ago and continues to fade. "Newer galaxies are simply putting out less energy than galaxies did in the past," astronomer Mehmet Alpaslan, with NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., told Discovery News. In other words, astronomers, for the first time, have gathered observational evidence that our universe is slowly marching toward its eventual heat death (in a few trillion years time).
getting old (Score:2)
is getting really old
Re:getting old (Score:5, Funny)
Netcraft confirms, the universe is dying.
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Netflix confirms too.
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the universe
Also known as the big scary dark thing.
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"Heat death"? (Score:2)
I thought it would be a freeze death, no?
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It's an entropy death.
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it is supposed to be either expand and freeze, or collapse and crunch. Maybe there are many universe centers that expand and contract repeatedly. Each super black hole going through the cycle. If so, I wonder how far apart the Universe centers are?
Third Possible Fate (Score:4, Interesting)
it is supposed to be either expand and freeze, or collapse and crunch.
Actually there is a third possibility: the big rip [wikipedia.org]. The expansion of the universe is accelerating and, if this continues and the Dark Energy driving it is of the right type, then space-time might literally rip itself apart.
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How is that different from heat death?
Re: Third Possible Fate (Score:2)
Heat death we might be able to fight for a bit, converting matter into energy. Big rip might just tear our molecules apart...
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How is that different from heat death?
With heat death the universe continues for ever more either continuing to expand and reaching a finite size. Nothing ever changes it just goes on forever as a dead, lifeless void empty of stars and life. With the Big Rip the expansion accelerates until space-time itself is ripped apart and the universe is replaced by something else but what we cannot say hence the ultimate fate remains unknown which seems a lot less depressing than just heat death.
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Re: "Heat death"? (Score:2)
I'd wager it depends on how big our universe's turtle is.
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It has to do with how many turtles there are. Do they really go all the way down? How far is that? There are still many unanswered questions.
As for the OP, think of it like this: When the heat dies, it will be very cold. Maybe "heat death" would make more sense expressed as "the death of heat".
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Spoiler Alert! (Score:2)
Since the metaphorical book is longer than can be read in a human lifetime, the ending is meaningless. We'll never know for sure.
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Unless understanding the ending is a crucial step in physics towards new technologies that provide us with medicines or replicators or something.
Man, it would be ironic if it enabled eternal life.
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Cold isn't a thing. Heat is a thing, a thing we call energy. Cold is just the lack of that heat/energy thing.
Upon the heat death of the universe, the lack of heat aka cold will be quite alive and well, and isn't going anywhere. In fact it will be all there is.
It is the heat aka energy that will be so diluted and evened out it may as well not exist anymore. Thus heat death.
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I know you're right, but cold sure feels like a thing when it's -40 (C or F, your choice).
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I don't think you understand what I said:
Previously the common thinking was that the universe would likely go in one of two directions - endless expansion or eventual contraction, the endless expansion resulting in a "death by cold", due to entropy, there would no longer be any transference of energy between objects and everything would simply be neutral. The other being contraction, which would eventually bring everything closer and closer together - resulting in a "death by heat", where too much energy wo
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Ahh, now I see what you mean. Slight miscommunication I'm guessing.
The usual way it is phrased is referencing the death of the heat within the universe, not the death of the universe itself.
But from the point of view of the universe, I can see what you mean in that the universe itself will "die" from freezing. Especially compared to the alternative of a contracting universe's fate.
Of course even that follows previous thinking that the universe will remain alive and well after this time, and only the heat/
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In a way it is - or a dilution death where everything evaporates into small particles unable to find each other. But it's still an open question if the universe eventually will contract and collapse into a singularity and then a new big bang occurs in a cyclic event or if it's just going to end as an empty balloon. Too little is known about the whole picture of the universe to be able to determine the fate.
In any case it's so far away in time that humankind isn't going to be around then - unless we are able
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It's the death of all heat.
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If the universe eventually dies than it implies that there was a beginning too. This would imply that there is something special about the few trillions of years between the beginning and end. If the universe and time are both infinite than I doubt that there is anything special about the few trillions of years this universe is in existence. If the universe dies than it should have died an infinite numbers of times before now. Our memory of any existence before now is lost at the time of death and rebir
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Thus, infinite universes could be born and die, on an infinite timeline. Even if this is true, it's still pretty special to exist.
*Nothing except for virtual particle+antiparticle pairs popping in and out o
Plan now (Score:5, Funny)
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That's against the laws of nature, so they'd be illegal immigrants.
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This is going to screw up the Hurd development cycle.
There is no life in the void. (Score:2)
Heat death denial (Score:4, Funny)
Still there are some ignorant deniers who don't accept the unanimous scientific proof that the heat death of the universe is human made.
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No, this is how global warming is going to save the universe.
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See also: (Score:2)
Entropy
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I was thinking http://downlode.org/Etext/nine... [downlode.org]
Let there be Light (Score:2)
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You're thinking of "The Last Question"
http://www.multivax.com/last_q... [multivax.com]
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(spoiler)
Approximation (Score:2)
Relativity (Score:2)
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Do do this you don't need speed, you need acceleration, for example by orbiting close to a supermassive black hole and manage not to get ripped apart by tidal forces or vaporized by all the crap that usually surround black holes.
Speed alone would make the time go slower for you, not faster.
Re:Relativity (Score:5, Informative)
Time dilation isn't proven, otherwise we wouldn't have been able to see anything.
What are you babbling about? The GPS system [ohio-state.edu] has detailed time dilation compensation built into it. It's not only proven, it has to be accounted for in the engineering of a functioning system in worldwide use.
GPS satellites are moving at 14,000 km/hr relative to Earth's surface, a Special Relativity time dilation of 7 microseconds per day. But Earth-based clocks are deeper in the gravity well of Earth, so they suffer a General Relativity time dilation of 45 microseconds per day. The nanosecond accurate clocks on board the satellites are pre-calibrated before launch to tick more slowly than they should while on Earth, so once in orbit, they tick at a General-Relativity-time-dilation-compensated rate that then matches Earth clocks. The software still has to compensate for any additional, unpredictable drift caused by orbital variances.
Time dilation is quite real, and must be accounted for, or GPS and Galileo wouldn't work at all. Uncompensated clock error amounts to 10km on Earth per day.
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There is special and general relativity and both must be accounted for and are measurable. Your failure to understand does not prove your point.
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Earth is Cubic opposites, nothing as circle. Duh.
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Time dilation isn't proven, otherwise we wouldn't have been able to see anything. Now the doppler shift is quite true, but that is not time dilation.
Time dilation has been directly observed by carrying atomic clocks from one place to another, both via planes and satellites. It has also been observed in particles via their halflife.
Then you are not moving at all. Speed is distance travelled over time.
You don't observer your own time being dilated, as your clock always appears to go the same speed. However you will observe length contraction, so the distance will have changed. As your speed increased relative to your destination, e.g. Alpha Centauri, then the distance will appear shorter by whatever observation methods y
Re:Relativity (Score:5, Informative)
If it takes you roughly 4 years to travel from Earth to Alpha Centaury you are traveling with the speed of light
That depends on who's clock you are using. If the person on Earth measures it as four years then yes you are correct. However if you are using the clock onboard the ship then a 4 year trip means that you are only at a fraction of light speed. The difference is that for you the distance between AC and Earth is less than 4 light years due to length contraction. Were you actually to travel at (almost) light speed the trip would take almost no time at all and, for you, AC and Earth would be almost no distance apart.
Special relativity is the most accurately tested scientific law that there has ever been. Every particle accelerator uses it - not just the LHC but the machines in the basement of hospitals to treat cancer and make medical isotopes. Cosmic rays would not exist in their observed form (muons would decay too fast) without time dilation and it has been seen using atomic clocks on Concorde. Time dilation might be an extraordinary claim but it is supported by extraordinary and overwhelming evidence.
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At high speeds the distant observer sees you getting slower.
Yes it is a bit weird but that far from the strangest thing to result from relativity!
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My My Hey Hey (Score:2)
The Universe is coming to an end (Score:2)
Please log off.
Cosmological Expansion Comes to Mind: (Score:2)
And what do you know: (from TFA)
The decline in galaxies’ energy output coincides with the universe’s ever-increasing rate of expansion, which is due to a mysterious, anti-gravity force referred to as dark energy.
So yeah, but no... it's just that you can't see as much of the newer stuff... ever, cos > speed of light. Not an entirely accurate headline but makes no difference i guess, the point is that cosmological expansion guarantees that everything we see will become less and less, that's before even bothering to consider start birth rate / death rate.
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Such is life (Score:2)
Everything has a beginning and end. No real surprise.
The Last Question (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Last Question (Score:5, Interesting)
Illustrated version http://bato.to/read/_/188371/the-last-question_by_supreme-cream-scanlations [bato.to]
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What a terribly shortsighted story.
I always find it striking that in every damn SciFi universe, humans somehow always stay superrelevant. Not only does our little species still exist in a highly recognizable form, it even usually plays some central role in that universe (generally filled with other highly anthropomorphic entities with strikingly similar cultures).
It is a ridiculous unfounded extrapolation of our time. Predicting human(like entitie)s in the far future is like predicting flying horse carriage
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A) It is so incredibly unlikely that out of the millions of sperm from your father you would be selected - along with him and your mother and going on back to the point where it was incredibly unlikely that the first sentient life would arise, continuing on to the point the first multicellular life would arise and on more to the point the first life would come to exist that you nor any other person has the right to call anything "unlikely."
Looking back is not the same as looking ahead. It is incredibly likely that one of the millions of sperm would be selected. Which one is almost irrelevant. We're not sure yet, but we expect many of the other things you mention (excluding abiogenesis) to be quite likely in our universe.
My main point here is actually not that it is directly unlikely that humans will continue to exist, but that anorganic sentience is more likely to arise, thereby inevitably displacing humans, given enough time.
B) The story actually specifically includes individualism giving way to a hive mind
Right before the
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Wow.. That wasn't even clever.
Hey, look, somebody shows my reasoning to be shit. Let me pretend he's a troll so I don't have to face reality.
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Are you 8 years old?
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As I replied to your non-AC-sibling: "Right before the end (and reboot) of the fucking universe, after they've survived their civilization going to type IV, yes. That sounds more like a last resort than anything else."
Technically, they don't even become obsolete. No, they are 'fused' to the cosmic AC, as if said cosmic AC has any fucking use for them, especially given that even in the very last moment they still don't have a fucking clue and rely on the AC for answers. It's retarded.
I don't give a fuck abou
Holy crap! We're in trouble! (Score:2)
In a few billion years, we're fucked!
Wait... (Score:2)
what about another big bang sized cosmic quantum fluctuation?
ehhhh, forget it... it's probably really unlikely
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oh... and
last post!!
heheheh, suckers
Unix epoch (Score:2)
Tell us straight (Score:2)
Don't try to soften the blow... just tell us... how many months does the universe have left?
Get off my lawn... (Score:5, Funny)
"Newer galaxies are simply putting out less energy than galaxies did in the past..."
Just like them young kids today, by dammit! Always settin' around and playin' with them tabulets and why-fie-fo-fummery and smart phones smaller'n yer pecker after a dip in the stream.
A dumb phone that just set there polite-like and rang 'til you answered or hit it with yer shoe was always good enough for me.
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Says you. After reading the article, I decided to stop paying my mortgage, water, electricity, and cell phone bills.
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Heh.
Too bad for you they are wrong. There is no heat death.
The same heat that was there before will still be there, for all time. Just more spread out. They call that entropy. Fancy pants with their fancy words..
It will never be zero, unless and until the size of the universe is infinity.
It's just a long heat slowdown. Put a coat on, and you'll be fine.
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And note the article said "hundreds of trillions" of years, which is two orders of magnitude bigger than mere single digit number of trillions. The universe has only been around for 0.0138 trillion years; Doom approaches, it'll only last some tens of thousands of times that long!
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Those people also get upset when they find out the earth will be uninhabitable in 300-400 million years due to Sun's expansion. Never mind modern humans have only existed for 150,000 years at most
Re:Shit! (Score:5, Funny)
Speaking of Disney, isn't copyright the one thing that can outlast the heat death of the universe?
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and that means Jar Jar will be imported into the next cycle.
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Speaking of Disney, isn't copyright the one thing that can outlast the heat death of the universe?
And student loans.
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Sure we'll be able to do it but the cost of the cartridges to do so will bankrupt you.
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How could we maintain the universe indefinitely?
We can't. We don't maintain the universe at all so we certainly can't do so indefinitely.
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A big point here is that Special Relativity is increasingly looking shaky. I know that is heresy/crack-pottery.
But consider dark matter and dark energy.
The stars around galaxies spin with IDENTICAL angular velocity indifferent to distance. The stars near the core spin around with the SAME angular velocity as stars at the rim. That is... imagine if pluto was going around the Sun at the same rate as Mercury... EXACTLY as many rotations over a given unit of time. Precisely.
Now that's fucking weird. But that's
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Let's see. There's plenty of evidence for dark matter that isn't galactic rotation curves, like gravitational lensing and problems with the composition of the Universe. Dark matter is matter that interacts weakly if at all electromagnetically, and we're already aware of matter (neutrinos) that does that. The amount of dark matter is determined by figuring out what the mass has to be. You're very close to saying that, if I put an object into a 1-pound box, and weigh the box with object at 11 pounds, the
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Let me first make the obvious admission that I'm a layman. I've never claimed to be otherwise.
Now lets get to the issue here, so you're saying dark matter is backed up by things besides galactic rotation? Can you cite why those require dark matter? Are you saying there are transparent gravitational lenses out in the middle of the universe that bend light without giving any indication of mass big enough to do it?
Regardless, my main issue with dark matter is not the concept but what it conveniently skips over
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Now you're asking good questions.
Yes, there are transparent gravitational lenses out there that bend light without giving any indication of mass big enough to do it, or at least not in the right place. The primary example is probably the Bullet Cluster. We can tell where the visible mass is in that cluster, and we can tell where the main mass is. They aren't the same.
The distributions don't match because they behave differently. If two pieces of matter run into each other, they change velocities.
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The bullet cluster is an odd citation... I know it is used to prove dark matter but the actual evidence doesn't look compelling to me.
Could we go through that?
As to premises... my understanding is that if the speed of light is variable that could also explain a lot of this stuff.
As to the orbital characteristics of dark matter. We're talking about something that is akin to a perfect pendulum? It falls into wells... fires out the other side... rinse repeat... forever? I understand the concept, I just think i
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Who said I have strong opinions about it?
I didn't. And what am I going to do about it? It doesn't hurt you or anything else whatever I believe about dark matter.
And the notion that if you just nod and bow you're ahead of the curve... I reject it. I might not know what I'm talking about but at least I'm thinking about it. Which is more than most people can say for themselves.
I'm not a believer in the old Catholic Church system where the priest tells people what is good and evil and the peasants kneel and bow
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You've read the words but not understood the meaning. We have a communication failure.
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As to lensing near galaxies, that doesn't prove dark matter.
What that proves is a distortion in space time or something of that nature near galaxies. Now the only thing we know of that can do that IS matter. So when we see that we say "clearly matter". The problem with that is that the way the galaxies are behaving suggests there might be something else going on.
The dark matter concept is a deus ex machina solution. You don't actually know what is going on there. And if it is dark matter, you then need to e
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hmmm... The lensing thing I'm going to put a pin in and skip over to what I feel is the critical issue...
The distribution. Now you're saying that because dark matter doesn't react electromagetically... it doesn't fall into gravity wells? That makes no sense. To the contrary it is electromagnetic reactions that tends to keep gas etc from falling into gravity wells. What inflates stars and keeps the mass from collapsing into a singularity?
EM radiation.
Okay... so your dark matter doesn't react with the repulsi
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Alright, so I didn't consider the EM thing meaning stuff would just fly out the other side. But even then, do the distribution patterns of mass make any sense?
And considering that we're admitting the existence of space time AND theorizing an ever present STUFF that is flowing through us at all times... is this model the best model?
Sometimes when you get all these corrections I think it pays to step back and consider if we didn't make a false assumption earlier on.
Possibly there is a better model that explai
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hmmm... not sure if we're talking about the same thing.
If we take any one galaxy as a given example and compare it to itself... we fine that the curve is very nearly flat once you leave the closest stars. That is, the disc is generally uniform. You're saying that isn't true for all spiral galaxies... can you give me an example of where it isn't true? I've never seen that.
The big problem with the dark matter hypothesis is that it is too convenient. Its a deus ex machina solution. And the observations are too
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I don't believe life works that way.
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My mom bought wheaties once and I hated them. Transitively I've always hated Bruce Jenner.