What will be the ultimate end of mankind? Even if in a billion or so years if man can escape this rock on which we are living where can we run? Is there no safe heaven? Will man be running for eons looking for that one safe place or will everything in the Universe as we know come to an end in a Big Crunch? Maybe time travel is a answer but it seems like no matter how many times we go back we still have to move forward. I guess that I was just thinking about my own offspring and theirs and so on and just the thought of this progress coming to an ultimate end in a firey armmagedon kind of freaked me out. I guess my question is where is this all going ultimately given the next several billion years? ( I really do not want to bum anyone out here. I am usually much more positive than this).
Exactly how will this have a factual answer? Perhaps this should be in Great Debates or IMHO?
If you want to REALLY get scared read Revelations in the Bible.
This would be factual.
Factual? Says who? And how would we prove it if it were?
If you want to recruit for your faith, try Great Debates or The BBQ Pit. General Questions is for factual topics.
Derleth how do we know anything is factual? and was the question non-factual or just the answer? what is your factual opinion? or do you have one?
if anyone’s interested in revelation, and wants to know factually what it says whether factual or not, i’ve already posted somewhere on this board and can pull up a link.
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[sup]Thanks, but no thanks #3[/sup][/ul]
My money is on a big crunch dooming mankind.
The sun will burn out before the “big crunch”. But, assuming that mankind could escape our solar system and settle throught the galaxy, it’s eventual fate, as I understand it, will come in one of two ways:
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Big crunch: Dark matter, dark energy, universal constant, yadda, yadda, yadda.
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Cooling of the universe: I’ve also heard a theory that the universe will eventually cool, and all particles of matter will be evenly spread about it. All the energy in the universe will be expended.
Check out The Five Ages of the Universe by Fred Adams. It gives a very nice (if depressing) description of the heat death of the universe.
It’s my understanding that the Big Crunch is pretty out of favor these days. Particularly with the recent discoveries of dark energy, the current scientific consensus seems to be accelerating expansion forever.
Off to Great Debates.
DrMatrix - GQ Moderator
I’ll tell you what’s depressing, I’ve been trying to develop a comfortable optimism, and already I’ve stubbed my toe.
Seriously, my spin on this is that if we accept this" big bang"-“big crunch” cycle, then it is just that, a cycle. It goes around. We came, we saw, we were squished (veni, vedi, squishy).
But there’s always next time…
Have a nice day.
veni, vidi, squishy, that is.
So, you think I can predict the end of the Universe with any certainty? Or do you think that just because I don’t swallow someone else’s predictions that I must have something else to replace them with?
All I have is all I’m justified in having: evidence and actual logic. I have no certain idea how the Universe will end, nor do I get to. I do have the observation that the Universe probably came from a Big Bang (redshifting of distant galaxies and the cosmic background radiation) and what I hear about spacetime’s possible curvature from those who have more information (and, quite possibly, more intelligence) than I have.
Note how I did not claim the status of fact for anything that cannot be independently verified. The Big Crunch is an untested (and, ultimately, untestable) hypothesis, the Big Bang is a current best guess based on available evidence, and the advancement of science does not come from pretending any differently. Stating, baldly and without preface, that Revelation is fact is something between hubris and outright dishonesty and not something I have to accept.
you guys are too ethnocenteric if you need to look at some extraterrestrial catalysm to be the reason of mankind’s end.
The Dodo bird was not the victim of a ‘Big Crunch’, and neither was the Dire Wolf, or Saber Tooth Tiger. Isn’t it quite possible that we will die out, as means of natural selection. Eventually, it will be too crowded on earth, w/ diminishing resources, and we won’t evolve enough to skirt that issue.
This rock known as earth may very well be here billions and billions of years after humans, as we know them are gone.
2067 Transformers become a reality; Optimus Prime built
2089 Matt Le Blanc becomes president of UN
2127 First set of hoover pants manufactured
2154 Human life ends in nuclear war between San Marino and Vermont
Wow! Matt Le Blanc becomes president of the UN at age 122!
Woody Allen, Annie Hall
The tea leaves never lie.
Isn’t conventional wisdom that there isn’t enough matter (dark or light ) to reimplode? The universe, endlessly drifting apart…
Yes, I believe current cosmological theories favor an ever-expanding, enrgy-losing Universe. This will take a LONG time. (Some estimates are about 10^50 years). But it sure is depressing that any great discoveries, achievements, etc will all get lost in a nothingless void.
Then again, if the Big Crunch were to occur, would there be any chance to ecape it and preserve a remnant of civilization? Current thinking is that we probably can’t do that either. Hmmm - damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
A Little Astronomy Humor Here:
After hearing a noted astronomer lecturing about the Big Crunch, a nervous audience member asked “How soon did you say before the Big Crunch occurs?” The astronomer said “sixty billion years”. The audience member (much relieved) said “Thank God !!! I thought you said FIFTY Billion !!!”