How Will the Universe End



I suppose every religion has a version of how the universe began and how it will end. To know the truth of those matters it is best to leave religion behind and learn what scientists are saying.

Science has not answered all these questions completely, but it knows a lot. Simplifying what science knows so people like me can understand it is done only occasionally. An article in Forbes attempted to do that.

In my way of thinking, whatever events gave us the current universe are still, and will always be, continuing. Thus, if there was a "big bang", there were events before it. Events that followed the big bang are on going. Scientists agree the universe is expanding and one day a long time from now that will affect our local planets including earth.

The Forbes article proposes some ways the universe will end. As I understand it, no one knows for certain whether gravity will pull the universe together causing crashes among its objects or gravity will weaken and send objects off into the beyond.

We also know our sun has a shelf life and will one day fail. Thus earth faces "problems" from at least two sources.

I bring this up to point out, not to be pessimistic, but to know how lucky we are to be here.  And, I like to think there is virtue of humility. We humans are an insignificant part of the universe. The universe was here before humans and will be here long after us. There is nothing in the known science of the universe to confirm we are in any way important.

My suggestion would be the next time a priest or preacher tells you that you are here to fulfill a promise of some god or there was a "covenant" allowing you to live forever, take it with a grain of salt.

Comments

  1. tsmJanuary 6, 2019 at 2:01 PM

    Why is humility a virtue? sounds like an echo of Christianity to me. Lucky to be here? Lucky for some no doubt, not so for many others. What of Nietzsche's eternal return? We get to do it all over and over again for ever and ever and ever. Nice prospect, eh? All that aside, I try to follow the latest in physics and astrophysics (not that I claim to understand much of it, it seems to get weirder and weirder). Just about every week there is some new development/hypothesis/ discovery that "surprises" astronomers and others. Something that just doesn't seem to comport with what we thought we knew about the universe. And by looking at images that left some distant galaxy a billion years or so ago, we conclude that the universe is expanding? huh? What's going on in that galaxy "now"? Maybe the dad burned thing is no longer there. The sun will flare out in a billion or so? That's what they say. But could it blow up tomorrow? Not likely, but who knows? Parallel universes? For all we know there could be a whole pastel of them "out there". What is matter? Do we really, truly know? Maybe Kant had it right: we know what it does but we have no blooming notion of what it really is. Ah yes, lots of humility seems to be in order. Maybe enough humility to concede the possibility of a Creator.

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    Replies
    1. Jon LindgrenJanuary 6, 2019 at 4:00 PM

      "Maybe enough humility to concede the possibility of a Creator." I have never said there is no possibility there was a creator. I've made clear many times we have not yet found the source of the universe. That leaves open a creator no matter how unlikely. That said, would you have enough humility to admit the universe may have some source other than a creator and that there is no God?

      Delete
    2. tsmJanuary 6, 2019 at 6:00 PM

      of course, I think a lot about that possibility and its implications. gratified to hear that you think that someday we may somehow find out that there is, after all, a creator.

      Delete

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