I looked at the blurb on Schild's Ladder and it reminded me a bit of Peter F. Hamilton's Void trilogy.
Higgs Boson Mass points to end of our Universe
- Thread starter Ayelbourne
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I looked at the blurb on Schild's Ladder and it reminded me a bit of Peter F. Hamilton's Void trilogy.
They actually employed a NASA scientist or some such as technical adviser so some bits were quite well done. I think there was a scene showing a realistic depiction of depressurization on a human body. Mostly, I remember Angela Basset...
Are you sure you're not thinking of Event Horizon? That movie did an excellent job portraying the effects of vacuum exposure realistically.
Ah, perhaps so. Those two films plus Sunshine tend to blur together in my memory as I have no desire to watch them again.
Actually, one might ponder if the universe being stable isn't a strange thing in the first place. If there were infinite universes,* I'd suspect that the average one would be either lifeless or contain conditions suitable for life only briefly. Universes that contain intelligent self-aware beings might turn out to be rather unlikely. They might also turn out to be themselves on the edge of being either lifeless or about to become lifeless very soon.
It took 14.8 Ga for life to reach the stage it is presently in, so to observe what we observe the universe doesn't need stability for more than a few tens of billions of years. Exactly the big slurp time frame. It would then be somewhat surprising if we had significantly more before us. If this turns out to be true, it would be depressing – I felt rather dispirited reading the first post – but it should not have been unexpected.
Another consequence of this line of thought is that we might turn out to be alone in the universe. I mean, if I'm correct to assume that we should be on the edge of being lifeless, life will be anything but abundant. But hey, life has to be like galactic federal elections - results on similar planets have to be highly correlated.
Please correct me, I want to be wrong.
* Actually, the probability that the universe is what it is has to be the same whether there is one or there are an infinite number, but meh, otherwise the anthropic principle makes less sense to me.
It took 14.8 Ga for life to reach the stage it is presently in, so to observe what we observe the universe doesn't need stability for more than a few tens of billions of years. Exactly the big slurp time frame. It would then be somewhat surprising if we had significantly more before us. If this turns out to be true, it would be depressing – I felt rather dispirited reading the first post – but it should not have been unexpected.
Another consequence of this line of thought is that we might turn out to be alone in the universe. I mean, if I'm correct to assume that we should be on the edge of being lifeless, life will be anything but abundant. But hey, life has to be like galactic federal elections - results on similar planets have to be highly correlated.
Please correct me, I want to be wrong.
* Actually, the probability that the universe is what it is has to be the same whether there is one or there are an infinite number, but meh, otherwise the anthropic principle makes less sense to me.
Snap, although I tend not to confuse their awfulness. The deliberately going into zero gravity to have sex scene in Supernova was especially special.
Even more special when you consider that the Spader/Bassett love scene was actually edited together out of parts of an abandoned sex scene between Tunney & Facinelli, using CGI to make Tunney's body appear to be black.
Awful awful film. Sunshine has problems, but it is an order of magnitude better than Supernova. Despite its general rubbishness, so is Event Horizon
Even more special when you consider that the Spader/Bassett love scene was actually edited together out of parts of an abandoned sex scene between Tunney & Facinelli, using CGI to make Tunney's body appear to be black.
Awful awful film. Sunshine has problems, but it is an order of magnitude better than Supernova. Despite its general rubbishness, so is Event Horizon
Sunshine was like two different movies--the first one being a lot better than the second.
I liked Event Horizon. Never saw Supernova. I'm kind of tempted to watch it, given how bizarre and terrible it sounds.
I think this is an astute observation.
About the easiest way to get to a happier place from there is to point out that, on the other hand, that fact alone doesn't seem to have any bearing on the question of whether additionally stability actually exists.
And, as far as the hypothesis presented in the OP is concerned, it's naturally way too preliminary.
Sure, in the same way that Earth will still be a planet a couple of billion years from now when the increase in the Sun's temperature will have rendered it too hot for life. It will be the same planet transformed into something completely different, and it would be misleading to call that an "alternate planet."
I'd just like to say how much I enjoy both of these posts. That is all. I'm too ignorant to add anything of value.
I think the proper term is "Collapse of the Vacuum," just as the cosmic egg that spawned the big bang--with all the universe's matter energy--was called the monobloc.
^Well, the monobloc/'cosmic egg" idea is a few decades out of date. Have you been reading old Asimov F&SF essays? I can't find any current online references to the term "monobloc" in connection with cosmology outside of a few works of fiction and discussion threads. It tends to be called a singularity these days in formal usage. And there are a lot of different hypotheses about what the nature of that singularity was, including the idea that it was simply a localized burst of expansion within a pre-existing vacuum, a universe born out of an earlier universe. The Big Bang may have been a change of state in the vacuum much like this end-of-the-universe state change that's being proposed.
Well, for the record, I actually was not someone who saw any problem with the use of lens flare in Trek 2009, but I did indeed leap at the opportunity for a lame joke upthread. I am sorry to have cluttered up this quite serious and informative discussion with a comment that did not contribute meaningfully to the thread. I can not, however, promise that it will not happen again....
In the new Higgs universe where basic physics gets altered, the laws of refraction might shift in a way that makes lens flare a serious and ongoing problem until we regrind or replace our existing cameras. This also implies that a warp starship could travel through regions of space where lens flare varies from normal, explaining why the effect would only be used during only selected parts of a movie, or in areas of the ship that aren't shielded as well. Data could probably adjust shield phase and nutation to reduce lens flare, which is why we never saw it on ST:TNG.
So the universe ends with the cosmic version of "Fuck it all, and reformat the drive"? Huh, seems fitting.
So that means this universe is no longer canon? Wait, am I no long canon? How does that affect my cosmological fanfic? Let me guess, Enterprise is still canon to both universes...great, just great.
So that means this universe is no longer canon? Wait, am I no long canon? How does that affect my cosmological fanfic? Let me guess, Enterprise is still canon to both universes...great, just great.
What if there's a billion year cycle of slight expansion and slight contraction? How could we ever notice that when we're in the expansion phase of the cycle?
