Funny you start this thread. The last couple months I been kinda depressed thinking about this. It’s almost like a battle between admiration, and anger at the same time. I think about it so much that the three dementional images in my head that I have about Space, Time, and the Universe, are starting to freak me out. I mean, we’re chilling on a giant ball of rock and gas. And we’re on a tiny planet. There are bigger ones! I’m not talking about something like Jupiter. It’s big, but it’s not Sun big. Try to imagine the size of our solar system, then a bunch of solar systems similar to ours in a Galaxy. Then picture billions and billions of Galaxies, just like ours, trillions upon trillions of miles between each other! It really makes you think, just what the hell is going on? Where is the start and end? Where are the walls? Forget whether or not God exists, what is the point of this repetitive cycle of stars and planets?
And then there’s time. All this stuff formed over billions of years. Billions? Before I was born, I had no concept of time. The same with sleep. Time does not exist, although only when I’m conscious. When I have passed, time again will cease to exist. The second I die, nothing exists. That’s fucked up. I mean, human kind will advance for a while, but in my dead state, things will likely end just as fast as they were created. Uh, yeah…
If you have plenty of time to think folks, find a hobby and don’t stop.
Nah. Isn’t that the way things are supposed to work? Cycles of creation and destruction? I’d maybe be sad about the cycle coming to an end, but not merely the universe.
Honestly, I don’t think about it. Fretting about the end of the universe in billions of years isn’t going to help me in my studies. By the time the universe ends, all the people I care about will be dead, so I really don’t care.
Some enterprising young species will discover alternate energy sources. As Master Control said, we’ve got a heck of a lot of time to work with.
The worst case scenario is the “big crunch”, and as long as that doesn’t happen, we’ll all be just fine. Side note: I know today’s evidence points toward infinite expansion, but I’ll leave the final determination to future scientists, such as the esteemed Ephram Glorzax Jr. of the 79 Ceti system.
The universe will not die. It will go to live with some nice people in the country, where it will have lots of room to run around. I know you’ll miss it, but it will be much happier there, really.
Ah, but Asimov’s story points out that eventually there will be no energy sources, alternate or otherwise. (Spoiler notwithstanding – this is a science fiction story.)
I think an ever-expanding universe is the worst-case scenario. In an ever-expanding universe, everything – everything – dies. Forever. With a Big Crunch, one cycle comes to an end and another one starts. (IIRC, the Hindu cosmology sounds a lot like an endless cycle of Big Bangs and Big Crunches.)
All we are is dust in the wind, dude. Doesn’t bother me one bit.
My ego is not threatened by my insignificance in the grand scheme of things, nor am I necessarily troubled by the idea that far in the future, all I see about me will be cinders.
I don’t think that’s the same as the universe ending. End of existence as we know it and all? Sure.
As to my feelings: I try to be zen about it. It makes sense to me. Sounds a little melancholy and weird, but the “twilight” aspect of it - once things are gone, they don’t come again, the great winding down of the celestial clock and such - that all makes sense from my perspective.
I agree that the universe - well, my teeny portion of it - would be much better without assholes. But we’re not a problem for the universe; we have no impact. We hardly ever even manage to get people off our own planet.
Works out nicely.