# So why haven't aliens destroyed the Universe yet? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 9, 2014, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001 "2014-09-09T19:28:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2014, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001/21 "2014-09-09T21:49:29Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > . . . Which also entails that it’s impossible to destroy the whole universe that way, since portions of it are, due to metric expansion, currently receding from us faster than the speed of light. But it’s still not something you’d want to happen in your immediate neighborhood… I’d heard that “runaway expansion” or inflation was considered one possibility. Is it now favored enough that one can comfortably say the portions of space-time are currently receding from us at ftl (expansionary/inflationary) rates? Have competing models pretty much been knocked down? (Last I saw on the subject was in Scientific American, some months ago, but they seemed to suggest it was only one idea in a wider field of competing notions.) (My old Astronomy prof spoke of going to conventions in the 70s and 80s, where there would be informal votes on whether or not Cygnus X-1 was a black hole or not. Each year, the votes swung more and more in favor. He emphasized that science is not done by voting…but he also noted that, sometimes, consensus among scientists resembles voting in some ways.) ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2014, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001/22 "2014-09-09T21:52:38Z")
**Der Trihs** : I’ve heard of that sf story, but have never actually read it. Sounds like fun! Hans Moravec alludes, in non-fiction, to the idea, in his book “Mind Children,” in the chapter on Limits to Computation. ETA: if memory serves, Moravec’s idea was to set up a computer to solve a very difficult question, such as factoring a very large composite number into two primes. The computer would simply guess at the answer, and then multiply the two guess-estimates together to see if they produced the original composite number. If so, hooray, the problem is solved. If not, you destroy the cosmos. Since we only continue to exist in those rare cosmoses where the problem is solved correctly, then, by a variant of the anthropic principle, we can solve huge problems in a shorter time than we ought to. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2014, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001/23 "2014-09-09T22:36:48Z")
**So why haven’t aliens destroyed the Universe yet?** Because alien Stephen Hawking warned them in plenty of time, just like non-alien Hawking did for us. ---
**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2014, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001/24 "2014-09-09T22:38:29Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Perhaps we live in a universe filled with _multiple_ expanding wavefronts of destruction, and none have reached us yet. > > I recall a sci-fi short story where scientist unknowingly devised an experiment that would destroy the universe in this way if turned on, and inadvertently proved the Many Worlds version of quantum mechanics to be true. Because you see, every time they tried to turn it on something would go wrong, no matter how careful they were or how implausible the impediment turned out to be. Because in all the quantum universes where the experiment _worked,_ everyone died instantly as the universe was destroyed, and only universes where it failed survived. A variation on the Quantum Suicide thought experiment. There was a paper on that but linked to the LHC up on arXiv a few years back. ---
**Author:** ![Rusalka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecd19e/32.png) [@Rusalka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rusalka)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2014, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001/25 "2014-09-09T22:46:25Z")
I’m scared now. Damn you, Stephen Hawking. ---
**Author:** ![Octarine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/22d042/32.png) [@Octarine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octarine)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2014, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001/26 "2014-09-09T23:49:27Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Perhaps we live in a universe filled with _multiple_ expanding wavefronts of destruction, and none have reached us yet. This is what I think is the most probable (well, to the extent that anything can be predicted when talking about events this abstract). I imagine it like an uncut block of Swiss cheese; many expanding bubbles of destruction, each centered around some alien scientist who pressed the Big Red Button. The universe is so incredibly, unbelievably, indescribably big, though, that the chances of our little planet being caught up in one of these bubbles during our lifespans is infinitesimal. Still possible, though. But there’s literally absolutely nothing to do about it, so worrying is pointless. It’s rather poetic when you think about it; if one of the waves of destruction came to Earth, we’d first see one star in the far distance extinguished - then another, and another, and another. Long before it actually came to our doorsteps, we’d be watching its progress. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2014, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001/27 "2014-09-10T00:00:41Z")
> [@Octarine](#): > > It’s rather poetic when you think about it; if one of the waves of destruction came to Earth, we’d first see one star in the far distance extinguished - then another, and another, and another. Long before it actually came to our doorsteps, we’d be watching its progress. It travels at lightspeed; so we’d never see it at all, we’d just be erased. ---
**Author:** ![EdwardLost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bbe5ce/32.png) [@EdwardLost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdwardLost)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2014, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001/28 "2014-09-10T00:24:07Z")
> [@Octarine](#): > > It’s rather poetic when you think about it; if one of the waves of destruction came to Earth, we’d first see one star in the far distance extinguished - then another, and another, and another. Long before it actually came to our doorsteps, we’d be watching its progress. I think we’d be hit without warning. If the wave is traveling at C, it would arrive right along with the last light from each poofed-out star. ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2014, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001/29 "2014-09-10T02:01:01Z")
News Flash: Sometimes geniuses, no matter how smart, can get it wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2014, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001/30 "2014-09-10T02:22:51Z")
Some species has to be the most advanced in the universe, it could be us (shudder). ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2014, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001/31 "2014-09-10T02:30:33Z")
> [@Rusalka](#): > > I was reading today about what Stephen Hawking said about the Higgs Boson and mere humans being able to destroy the universe by mucking with the Higgs Boson in an extra large supercollider (can’t be that far off in the future, can it?) If there really are beings much more advanced than us in the universe, why haven’t they destroyed it yet by accident by doing similar experiments? But did he at any point say it would be _inevitable_? That given an extremely large number of possible worlds and an extremely large period of time, _anything_ that’s nominally possible _will_ happen, is not necessarily how things work. OTOH erasing existence itself is one rockin’ awesome achievement 😃 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2014, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001/32 "2014-09-10T03:04:07Z")
Maybe they’re not trying. I think that is called “projection” – when humans attribute to others their own unacceptable or unwanted attributes, thoughts, or emotions ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2014, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001/33 "2014-09-10T07:27:51Z")
Apparently the hypothetical accelerator in question would [have to be the size of the earth](http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/steven-hawking-warns-doomsday). So the universe might be here because destroying it is just too costly to bother with. Also the calculation might be wrong anyway. Still, billions of stars in billions of galaxies… ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2014, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001/34 "2014-09-10T08:37:05Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I’d heard that “runaway expansion” or inflation was considered one possibility. Is it now favored enough that one can comfortably say the portions of space-time are currently receding from us at ftl (expansionary/inflationary) rates? Have competing models pretty much been knocked down? (Last I saw on the subject was in Scientific American, some months ago, but they seemed to suggest it was only one idea in a wider field of competing notions.) It’s got nothing to do with inflation, it’s a feature of bog-standard big bang cosmology: if the universe expands at a constant rate, then whatever’s two times as far away from us recedes two times as quickly, and at some point, that’ll simply increase beyond the speed of light. It’s often said that this is allowed because it’s ‘space itself’ moving that fast, not the stuff in space, but really, it’s more accurate to say that velocity in general relativity is a local notion, so the bound of c simply doesn’t apply in this case. There are, in fact, galaxies that we can observe which are travelling away from us at a speed faster than c (which we can observe because their light was emitted way in the past). See the discussion in the [‘faster than light’-article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light#Universal_expansion) on wikipedia. ---
**Author:** ![buddha\_david](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee7513/32.png) [@buddha\_david](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddha_david)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2014, 10:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001/35 "2014-09-10T10:09:01Z")
My belief is that the Universe has already been destroyed, and everyone’s in a state of advanced denial. ---
**Author:** ![Stealth\_Bragg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4bbf92/32.png) [@Stealth\_Bragg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stealth_Bragg)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2014, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001/36 "2014-09-10T11:27:33Z")
Sounds like a variation on: “There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.” ---
**Author:** ![Lightnin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightnin/32/180_2.png) [@Lightnin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightnin)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2014, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001/37 "2014-09-10T11:36:48Z")
This is, I think, one of the stronger arguments for either Quantum Immortality or for the concept that we’re living in a Matrix. QI Interpretation: the universe _has_ been destroyed (or never actually came into being). Billions of times. However we’re not aware of those universes, because _we’re not in them_. If we _were_ ever in one of those destroyed universes, that version of us just ceased to exist- but “we” still exist in some universe, no matter how likely. It’s a great hypothesis, but completely untestable. Matrix Interpretation: whoever made the Matrix engineered the universe such that we’re either the first species intelligent enough to destroy it, or they put in safeguards to keep us stupid little algorithms from screwing everything up the whole simulation. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2014, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001/38 "2014-09-10T12:11:00Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > I recall a sci-fi short story where scientist unknowingly devised an experiment that would destroy the universe in this way if turned on, and inadvertently proved the Many Worlds version of quantum mechanics to be true. Because you see, every time they tried to turn it on something would go wrong, no matter how careful they were or how implausible the impediment turned out to be. Because in all the quantum universes where the experiment _worked,_ everyone died instantly as the universe was destroyed, and only universes where it failed survived. A variation on the Quantum Suicide thought experiment. Reminds me of [this comical essay on time travel.](http://brunching.com/timetravel.html) > [@Brunching Shuttlecocks](#): > > … > And that, my friends, is where we are now. Time travel may be possible, but anyone who tries to discover it will fail, probably due to a misadventure of ludicrous improbability. > > So the next time you read about an eminent physicist buried alive in a tragic pudding-transport accident, or you’re distracted once again from your experiment to see what would happen if you hooked all the Swatches left over from the eighties up to one of those new cars with the computerized mapping software, remember: it’s all for the best. ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Wayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4bbf92/32.png) [@Charlie\_Wayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Wayne)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2014, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001/39 "2014-09-10T13:39:52Z")
> [@Rusalka](#): > > I was reading today about what Stephen Hawking said about the Higgs Boson and mere humans being able to destroy the universe by mucking with the Higgs Boson in an extra large supercollider (can’t be that far off in the future, can it?) If there really are beings much more advanced than us in the universe, why haven’t they destroyed it yet by accident by doing similar experiments? Perhaps they did and due to the limit of the speed of light, we just haven’t realized it yet. The universe may have been destroyed many years ago. But we just may not have seen the effect yet. It could take thousands of years for that “Bang” to get to our door. ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Wayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4bbf92/32.png) [@Charlie\_Wayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Wayne)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2014, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001/40 "2014-09-10T13:40:55Z")
> [@buddha\_david](#): > > My belief is that the Universe has already been destroyed, and everyone’s in a state of advanced denial. Oops. I didn’t see this post before making mine. Sorry. Hmmm … I wonder if that may be a comment on my thinking the destruction has already happened and we just haven’t noticed yet? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-why-havent-aliens-destroyed-the-universe-yet/698001.md?page=3)