The creation... and end of the universe

oddment

Inspired by the discussions in the gravity thread, I thought I would start up a topic based soley around ideas behind the creation of the universe and how it may all come to an end (if it ever will).

It isn't intended to be a place to say things like 'Creationists suck!'... just a place to discuss different theories and their merits, as well as personal opinions on the subject, and obviously anything related to the topic in hand.

I was going to put up a load of theories in the OP, but I figure to save space and time, I shall instead direct you to wikipedia if you want to look any further into the theories if you are not already aware of them. Searches like 'creation of the universe' and 'fate of the universe' will give you the beginnings and outlines of the subjects.


It is a rather fascinating subject I think, though one we are still a long way off from fully understanding. In the past century though, we have made leaps and bounds in terms of scientific technology and thinking to be able to successfully theorise the subjects, even if those theories don't pan out quite the way we hope.

Anywho, I command ye... discuss!

Dalboz

The universe will end in the eventual heat death according to the second law of thermodynamics. Done.

electricitylikesme

Alternatively the repulsive force of the universe proposed in some hypotheses is dynamic and increasing in strength and eventually tears the universe apart.

This would be similar to a heat death, but more awesome.

SanderJK

I take the Douglas Adams approach to Big Bang:

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

oddment

Is there any credence behind the theory of the Big Crunch still?

It may not be scientifically plausible, but I quite like the idea that the universe will collapse back into itself, and then perhaps respawn again with another Big Bang event... which I believe is the cyclical theory. Though I have heard that science backs the whole heat death thing more at the moment, as per Dalboz's post.

Dickerdoodle

oddment wrote: »

Is there any credence behind the theory of the Big Crunch still?

It may not be scientifically plausible, but I quite like the idea that the universe will collapse back into itself

"gnab gib" -- the opposite of the big bang.

Douglas Adams has to be the most quotable sci-fi dude ever.

NotASenator

Dalboz wrote: »

The universe will end in the eventual heat death according to the second law of thermodynamics. Done.

The Last Question, By Isaac Asimov

http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

Octoparrot

oddment wrote: »

Is there any credence behind the theory of the Big Crunch still?

It may not be scientifically plausible, but I quite like the idea that the universe will collapse back into itself, and then perhaps respawn again with another Big Bang event... which I believe is the cyclical theory. Though I have heard that science backs the whole heat death thing more at the moment, as per Dalboz's post.

Reminds me of

"So, tell me what brings you to the future."
"Well, I wanted to meet Shakespeare and I figured that time was cyclical."
"Nope. Straight line."

Solandra

T S Eliot said it well in The Hollow Men...

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

darthmix

Regarding the creation, I rather like this essay by Paul Davies, which I shall now quote in part.

Paul Davies wrote:

If the big bang was the beginning of time itself, then any discussion about what happened before the big bang, or what caused it-in the usual sense of physical causation-is simply meaningless. Unfortunately, many children, and adults, too, regard this answer as disingenuous. There must be more to it than that, they object.

Indeed there is. After all, why should time suddenly "switch on"? What explanation can be given for such a singular event? Until recently, it seemed that any explanation of the initial "singularity" that marked the origin of time would have to lie beyond the scope of science. However, it all depends on what is meant by "explanation." As I remarked, all children have a good idea of the notion of cause and effect, and usually an explanation of an event entails finding something that caused it. It turns out, however, that there are physical events which do not have well-defined causes in the manner of the everyday world. These events belong to a weird branch of scientific inquiry called quantum physics.

Mostly, quantum events occur at the atomic level; we don't experience them in daily life. On the scale of atoms and molecules, the usual commonsense rules of cause and effect are suspended. The rule of law is replaced by a sort of anarchy or chaos, and things happen spontaneously-for no particular reason. Particles of matter may simply pop into existence without warning, and then equally abruptly disappear again. Or a particle in one place may suddenly materialize in another place, or reverse its direction of motion. Again, these are real effects occurring on an atomic scale, and they can be demonstrated experimentally.

A typical quantum process is the decay of a radioactive nucleus. If you ask why a given nucleus decayed at one particular moment rather than some other, there is no answer. The event "just happened" at that moment, that's all. You cannot predict these occurrences. All you can do is give the probability-there is a fifty-fifty chance that a given nucleus will decay in, say, one hour. This uncertainty is not simply a result of our ignorance of all the little forces and influences that try to make the nucleus decay; it is inherent in nature itself, a basic part of quantum reality.

The lesson of quantum physics is this: Something that "just happens" need not actually violate the laws of physics. The abrupt and uncaused appearance of something can occur within the scope of scientific law, once quantum laws have been taken into account. Nature apparently has the capacity for genuine spontaneity.

It is, of course, a big step from the spontaneous and uncaused appearance of a subatomic particle-something that is routinely observed in particle accelerators-to the spontaneous and uncaused appearance of the universe. But the loophole is there. If, as astronomers believe, the primeval universe was compressed to a very small size, then quantum effects must have once been important on a cosmic scale. Even if we don't have a precise idea of exactly what took place at the beginning, we can at least see that the origin of the universe from nothing need not be unlawful or unnatural or unscientific. In short, it need not have been a supernatural event.

WMain00

Relative time theory (perhaps) suggests the Universe will end when it runs out of "time", in the sense of time and space being physical objects in the Universe.

Personally my head explodes trying to fathom any of it. Then mathematics start dancing on my gooey remains.

NotASenator

Solandra wrote: »

T S Eliot said it well in The Hollow Men...

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

For all the science in all the world, give me a poet's heart.

emnmnme

This thread is a glorious opportunity to collect dates on when the earth is supposed to end through divine means. The Mayans believed the world will end in 2012. Muslims predict 2280 as the world's last year. Nostradamus picked a far-off date, too.

Here's a nice little website for some Christian dates. http://www.bible.ca/pre-date-setters.htm

electricitylikesme

I predict in 2012, much like every other time the world was supposed to end, absolutely nothing will happen.

Kilroy

I saw something on the history channel (I believe it was on an episode of "The Universe") regarding a theory called the "Big Rip." The idea is that the expansive movement of the universe is going to continue until everything is so far apart that gravity can't control it any more. At that point, the universe will literally tear itself apart, down to the smallest particles in existence.

It seems like a decent theory to me. It makes logical sense, at least. The only major difficulty with it would be proving that the expansion is indefinite and determining what drives it. Basically, if we've screwed up our idea of how gravity works again, then this goes out the window.

CrimsonKing

electricitylikesme wrote: »

I predict in 2012, much like every other time the world was supposed to end, absolutely nothing will happen.

2012 is actually just the end of a cycle of some wort in their calendar. Its not the end end.

Fallingman

Kilroy wrote: »

I saw something on the history channel (I believe it was on an episode of "The Universe") regarding a theory called the "Big Rip." The idea is that the expansive movement of the universe is going to continue until everything is so far apart that gravity can't control it any more. At that point, the universe will literally tear itself apart, down to the smallest particles in existence.

It seems like a decent theory to me. It makes logical sense, at least. The only major difficulty with it would be proving that the expansion is indefinite and determining what drives it. Basically, if we've screwed up our idea of how gravity works again, then this goes out the window.

I heard that it will eventually slow down, and then gravity will pull it all back together until another Big Bang sends it spiraling out again...

taliosfalcon

darthmix wrote: »

Regarding the creation, I rather like this essay by Paul Davies, which I shall now quote in part.

Paul Davies wrote:

If the big bang was the beginning of time itself, then any discussion about what happened before the big bang, or what caused it-in the usual sense of physical causation-is simply meaningless. Unfortunately, many children, and adults, too, regard this answer as disingenuous. There must be more to it than that, they object.

Indeed there is. After all, why should time suddenly "switch on"? What explanation can be given for such a singular event? Until recently, it seemed that any explanation of the initial "singularity" that marked the origin of time would have to lie beyond the scope of science. However, it all depends on what is meant by "explanation." As I remarked, all children have a good idea of the notion of cause and effect, and usually an explanation of an event entails finding something that caused it. It turns out, however, that there are physical events which do not have well-defined causes in the manner of the everyday world. These events belong to a weird branch of scientific inquiry called quantum physics.

Mostly, quantum events occur at the atomic level; we don't experience them in daily life. On the scale of atoms and molecules, the usual commonsense rules of cause and effect are suspended. The rule of law is replaced by a sort of anarchy or chaos, and things happen spontaneously-for no particular reason. Particles of matter may simply pop into existence without warning, and then equally abruptly disappear again. Or a particle in one place may suddenly materialize in another place, or reverse its direction of motion. Again, these are real effects occurring on an atomic scale, and they can be demonstrated experimentally.

A typical quantum process is the decay of a radioactive nucleus. If you ask why a given nucleus decayed at one particular moment rather than some other, there is no answer. The event "just happened" at that moment, that's all. You cannot predict these occurrences. All you can do is give the probability-there is a fifty-fifty chance that a given nucleus will decay in, say, one hour. This uncertainty is not simply a result of our ignorance of all the little forces and influences that try to make the nucleus decay; it is inherent in nature itself, a basic part of quantum reality.

The lesson of quantum physics is this: Something that "just happens" need not actually violate the laws of physics. The abrupt and uncaused appearance of something can occur within the scope of scientific law, once quantum laws have been taken into account. Nature apparently has the capacity for genuine spontaneity.

It is, of course, a big step from the spontaneous and uncaused appearance of a subatomic particle-something that is routinely observed in particle accelerators-to the spontaneous and uncaused appearance of the universe. But the loophole is there. If, as astronomers believe, the primeval universe was compressed to a very small size, then quantum effects must have once been important on a cosmic scale. Even if we don't have a precise idea of exactly what took place at the beginning, we can at least see that the origin of the universe from nothing need not be unlawful or unnatural or unscientific. In short, it need not have been a supernatural event.

that quote basically seems to say "shit happens, and we have no idea why, maybe it happens for no reason at all" which seems to make theorizing end of universe scenarios pretty pointless. If it just started for no reason at all, why should we expect it to end in some normal theorized fashion?

darthmix

Fallingman wrote: »

I heard that it will eventually slow down, and then gravity will pull it all back together until another Big Bang sends it spiraling out again...

Yeah, that's the Big Crunch theory alluded to earlier. It's out of favor right now because the universe seems to be accelerating in its expansion instead of slowing down.

Qingu

Paul Davies wrote:

If the big bang was the beginning of time itself, then any discussion about what happened before the big bang, or what caused it-in the usual sense of physical causation-is simply meaningless.

This echoes what Stephen Hawking writes about in A Brief History of Time. There is no "beginning" or "creation" of the universe—the universe simply is.

The word "creation" implies that there was a time period in which something did not exist, followed by a time in which it does exist. But if time is wholly part of spacetime, and hence part of the universe, then there is no time in which the universe does not exist.

Hawking's analogy for the big bang is the north pole of the earth. Talking about "before the big bang" is like talking about "north of the north pole." There's literally no such thing. Hawking also brings up the QM concept of imaginary time, which I admit I don't actually understand, but his explanation seems to jive with what Davies said.

shryke

God did it.

amateurhour

darthmix wrote: »

Fallingman wrote: »

I heard that it will eventually slow down, and then gravity will pull it all back together until another Big Bang sends it spiraling out again...

Yeah, that's the Big Crunch theory alluded to earlier. It's out of favor right now because the universe seems to be accelerating in its expansion instead of slowing down.

wouldn't there be a possibility that this happens with so much force that either a) we wouldn't notice it, or

b) it would basically just create an inside out, mirror version of everything, and we (our parallel universe selves) wouldn't notice it.

ya know... since we're theorizing here and all : )

WMain00

CrimsonKing wrote: »

electricitylikesme wrote: »

I predict in 2012, much like every other time the world was supposed to end, absolutely nothing will happen.

2012 is actually just the end of a cycle of some wort in their calendar. Its not the end end.

Yes indeed. What the interweb forgets (because it's far more fun to have doom and gloom and disaster) is that the Mayan calander is built on a circular system, charted by the stars. The 2012 prediction isn't a prediction at all, it's merely one revolution of our solar system travelling through the galaxy.

I think. Something like that anyway. :?:

Kilroy

So we have one theory that the universe's expansion will accelerate indefinitely and another that it will slow and eventually reverse. Interesting.

On the one hand the idea of it slowing makes sense based on what we've seen of movement on Earth. When something moves against the force of gravity, it does slow down as it moves. This theory would also support the idea of a universe that will exist forever, since it follows this supposed Bang-Crunch-Bang cycle.

On the other hand, all the current evidence that we have points toward the expansion accelerating. We just don't know why. The only explanation so far is "dark energy" and we don't even know what the hell that is.

As I said before, it all seems to hinge on us discovering what powers the expansion. But could we even do that? We don't have any similar situations to compare to (i.e. we don't have another universe to observe) and I doubt if we could reproduce the effect on a small scale. As per usual, the universe offers no answers, only more questions.

Apothe0sis

Penrose has recently put his support behind a weird sort-of-variation on the big crunch.

The universe will continue to expand to such a point that time and space expand "too far", stop working and the universe loses all sense of scale within itself. As such, the universe continually expands from something which was at once always expanding and though at one instant insanely huge and the very next instant, infinitely curved/a singularity/really rather small.

darthmix

taliosfalcon wrote: »

that quote basically seems to say "shit happens, and we have no idea why, maybe it happens for no reason at all" which seems to make theorizing end of universe scenarios pretty pointless. If it just started for no reason at all, why should we expect it to end in some normal theorized fashion?

Well, I think you're mischaracterizing the thrust of the quote, and I'd encourage you to read the rest of the essay also. It does say that for things to happen for no reason at all is itself a fundamental quality of the universe, but that this phenomenon takes place mostly at the quantum - that is, subatomic - level. If we imagine that the whole universe proceeded fourth from a particle or space subatomic in size, where quantum rules apply, then for there not to have been a cause might be the most natural explanation after all.

I guess if that's true, then you could have an end to the universe due to the same randomness, if you could somehow return the whole universe to that subatomic quantum state. But we don't have any physical model for that occurring right now. There's always the Starship Titanic scenario, in which every particle of the universe randomly and simultaneously ceases to exist due to a quantum anomaly, but the probability of that is, well, prohibitively low.

oddment

I found a very interesting entry on Wikipedia (I was at work, it is a site I use to wyle away the time till I can come home again), about something called Fecund universes. Have a read of it if you wish, but the basic point is, because white holes can't really exist according to science now, it is possible that instead of energy being released from the event horizon of a white hole, matter entering a black hole will instead be the catalyst for a big bang of a completely seperate universe. This being the case, and obviously if it were true, our own universe's big bang could have been the result of such a thing happening in ANOTHER universe.

I don't fully comprehend the ideas behind it, but if this were the case, would all subsequent material to go through a black hole end up in this other universe, or would the matter only create a big bang effect triggering another universe once the black hole itself somehow closed?

ElJeffe

I submit that the world actually ended 17 years ago, but nobody noticed.

GOJIRA!

Solar cycles are ~11 years long, iirc. The Mayan calendar is a base10 metric system and I recall a few articles on SPACE.com and programs on NAT GEO where a research team made a new date for the "end." They put it more in the latter part of 2011, not 2012. But yeah, its just the end of a solar cycle in 2012. You generally see activitiy (spots, CMEs, etc) throughout the cycle and I cannot recall one end of the cycle being more active than the other. If its a nasty cycle, however, we may see some severe interruptions in satellite and radio transmissions on an unprecendented scale. Its only going to be an potential issue now because of the proliferation of satellite systems.

Professor Phobos

taliosfalcon wrote: »

that quote basically seems to say "shit happens, and we have no idea why, maybe it happens for no reason at all" which seems to make theorizing end of universe scenarios pretty pointless. If it just started for no reason at all, why should we expect it to end in some normal theorized fashion?

Not...exactly. It is saying that on the quantum level, it is empirically evident that randomness is a fact of the universe. Since we know that the starting conditions of the Big Bang would elevate the quantum level to a scale necessary to have large effects, we can infer that the Big Bang might very well have just been random. Unless the end of the universe elevates the quantum as the start of the universe appears to have done, it should be substantially more predictable.

As in, we have grounds to argue that the cause of the big bang was essentially random. Just because something is randomly doesn't mean there's no reason for it, just that the causation was chaotic.

Evander

Have we brougt up the Great Green Arkleseizure yet?

Dracomicron

I predict that, in 2012, I will die a little bit, inside.

darthmix

ElJeffe wrote: »

I submit that the world actually ended 17 years ago, but nobody noticed.

This day in history, 17 years ago

• US forces prepared to launch Operation Desert Storm
• oral sex was very popular
• the end of the world occurred
• Dances with Wolves was king at the box office

DasUberEdward

Better question. What happens before the creation and after the destruction of the universe?

Couscous

DasUberEdward wrote: »

Better question. What happens before the creation and after the destruction of the universe?

Nothing.

GOJIRA!

DasUberEdward wrote: »

Better question. What happens before the creation and after the destruction of the universe?

Two questions humanity will never be able to reliably measure--qualitatively or quantitatively. My vote is for a kegger though.

oddment

Well, if the universe is cyclical, then there was never a beginning and there'll never be an end. If it's heat death, its possible the universe started randomly, as stated previously, and won't end as such... there will just be nothing but gamma radiation and photons, with occassional other things popping in and out of existence. Or perhaps, like the Fecund universes theory I stated above, universes give birth to other universes as it is... and it's just like the cycle of life on earth.

emnmnme

Didn't one of the books from Ender's Game series have an amusing guess on what happened to the universe. It was the one where Ender visited the planet full of little pig people and human settlers. The idea in the book was universes overlap and before one is destroyed, another universe in another dimension is started, thanks to a powerful entity. In Ender's case, the entity was his computer pal, Jane. And that's why only Jane can allow for faster-than-light travel. Oh, you're such a Card, Orson Scott!

It's been years since I read the book but maybe someone knows the story better than I do.

RichardTauber

darthmix wrote: »

Paul Davies wrote:

Humankind hasn't discovered how quantum physics works and thusfore it must be completely random which means that the creation of everything and all that is and can be must have been a big wank of the free will.

darthmix

Look, it's okay if you want to assert that quantum physics assigns the quality of randomness to events whose mechanics it doesn't fully understand. Just don't try to assert that Davies said that; what he said is the oppositte of that.

darthmix wrote: »

Paul Davies wrote:

If you ask why a given nucleus decayed at one particular moment rather than some other, there is no answer. The event "just happened" at that moment, that's all. You cannot predict these occurrences. All you can do is give the probability-there is a fifty-fifty chance that a given nucleus will decay in, say, one hour. This uncertainty is not simply a result of our ignorance of all the little forces and influences that try to make the nucleus decay; it is inherent in nature itself, a basic part of quantum reality.

RichardTauber

darthmix wrote: »

Look, it's okay if you want to assert that quantum physics assigns the quality of randomness to events whose mechanics it doesn't fully understand. Just don't try to assert that Davies said that; what he said is the oppositte of that.

darthmix wrote: »

Paul Davies wrote:

If you ask why a given nucleus decayed at one particular moment rather than some other, there is no answer. The event "just happened" at that moment, that's all. You cannot predict these occurrences. All you can do is give the probability-there is a fifty-fifty chance that a given nucleus will decay in, say, one hour. This uncertainty is not simply a result of our ignorance of all the little forces and influences that try to make the nucleus decay; it is inherent in nature itself, a basic part of quantum reality.

You're right, he didn't say what I said, but he still gives no answer and says that quantum reality is pretty random and that there's nothing that we can do about it. Just because we don't know the rules of quantum physics doesn't mean we can't gain more understanding about it and in the future understand how it works and why it isn't random.