Can you Handle Reality?

[Meatpie]

(An essay on deah and the ultimate destruction of everything)

by Meatpe, October 31,

(halloween!!!)

As one famous physicist said, "The universe is trying to kill us". Another physicist told the BBC in an interview in October, "I am scared of the universe and shocked how violent it really is"

And so is the author of this short essay.

Its easy to get lost and forget about these questions in our day-to-day activites, after all we are stuck on a planet and we struggle to survive on it.

But I think about it every day, every morning I wake up and every night I go to bed.

Whats the point and where are we are going?

Well nowehere.

As I said we are stuck. Even after we die, our bones remain in the earth's crust.

Because of plate tectonics, we will gradually sink into the earths mantle and get recycled. That very idea make my stomach hurt and I wanna puke at how sick, fucked up and brutal everything is.

But lets continue.

So we maybe recycled but we are still on the same planet.

But even the planet won't continue to rotate forever.

Latest estimates and computer simulations show the sun is going to engulf and completely destroy the Earth.

We will be cosmic dust again!

I told this to my mom and she said, "what? no way..."

Oh yes mom, there is a way! And it has a twist to it! I stopped telling her more because she didn't seem intersted into the bigger picture, like most people.

But the story continues.

The cosmic dust that we are now then collapses again after several million years and may form another sun and maybe planets.

The universe too is slowly dying. It will die from lack of energy, the so called Heat Death.

Just imagine we are together on a forum now but we will soon all be dead and buried and waiting for the

ULTIMATE END OF EVERYTHING

It will take trilions of years for the universe to really die. But it will die. And it will be violent.

No one knows exaclty what will happen. As galaxies merge and the supermissive black holes at their centers merge they will become even more massive and more powerful and will draw more matter in - other glaxies, stars, gas, comets.

Eventually most matter gets locked up in supermassive black holes.

Now that will be the end for us but not for the universe. In a black hole time and space become crushed out of existence.

The universe will become so streched, so cold, so dark and empty, even a single thought will take millions of years.

It will be cold, dark and fucking lonely.

No one is sure what happens from then on so I stop here.

WHATS THE POINT OF HUMAN LIFE?

Surprisingly, human life has a meaning. By moving around we burn energy and release heat - we do "work" on the universe so to speak.A certain amount of "transformation energy" will be used as the molecules of the "working body" do work on each other when they change from one state to another. During this transformation, there will be a certain amount of heat energy loss or dissipationdue to intermolecular friction and collisions; energy that will not be recoverable if the process is reversed.

This is called entropy.

Entropy stems from thermodynamics and the arrow of time stems from entropy - all three interconected.

Humans are beautiful creatures because we love asking questions and we try to find the answers.

But sometime the answers can overwhelm you and seem unreal, unrealstic even impossible.

I know, I feel the same way as you probably do right now.

I can continue with this discussion but it can become too messy and boring to read.

Hope you enjoyed this essay and I am looking forward to your responses.

-------

If you want to find out more search on the net for:

*My essay is based on the following concepts:
I am also subscibed to lectures on Cosmology, two times a week.

Future of the Universe
Heat Death
Entropy
Thermodynamics
Irreversibility
Arrow of Time
Stellar evolution
Yellow Dwarf
Plate Tectonics
Black Hole era
Large-scale structure of the universe
Cosmic inflation

:sm (3):

 

[ArrowMan]

"Arrow of Time"

I likes the "Arrow of Time" topic...da BEST, oh yah, PieMAN, yous BETTCHAS I shure da-DOEZ !
:sm (42)::sm (42):
:sm (31)::sm (52)::sm (8)::sm (32):

 

[JMsidious]

You sound nihilistic, Meat.

As for anyone who really worries about the ultimate "death" of the universe, the best advice would be "Get a life!"

But I understand you are speaking transcendentally - I am an atheist, as I suspect you are, or you're at least agnostic.

On the time scale of the history of the Earth an individual human lifetime is a mere blink of an eye. We're born, we live, and we die--and then we are "heard no more." Death is like a dreamless sleep from which we will never awake, our consciousness snuffed out forever. If this life is all there is, what is the point of living? If we're all going to be dead in the end anyway, what difference does it make what we do with our lives? We may influence the lives of others, but they too are doomed to death. In a few generations most of our accomplishments will be totally forgotten, the memories of our lives reduced to a mere name etched on a tombstone or written on a genealogy chart. In a few centuries even our tombstones will be unreadable due to weathering; our skeletal remains will be all that is left of us. Barring fossilization, these too will be disintegrated into the earth and no trace of us will remain. The matter from which we were made will be absorbed into other organisms--plants, animals, even other human beings. New species will appear, flourish, and disappear, soon to be replaced by others filling in the niche left by their extinction. Human beings too will succumb to extinction. All life on Earth will be wiped out when our dying sun expands into a red giant, finally engulfing the Earth. Ultimately the universe will be incapable of supporting any life as it expands forever, leaving only residual heat and evaporating black holes, or contracts back on itself, fusing all matter and energy into a final Big Crunch. Either way, all life in the universe will disappear forever.

Death appears to render life meaningless for many people because they feel that there is no point in developing character or increasing knowledge if our progress is ultimately going to be thwarted by death. However, there is a point in developing character and increasing knowledge before death overtakes us: to provide peace of mind and intellectual satisfaction to our lives and to the lives of those we care about for their own sake because pursuing these goals enriches our lives. From the fact that death is inevitable it does not follow that nothing we do matters now. On the contrary, our lives matter a great deal to us. If they did not, we would not find the idea of our own death so distressing--it wouldn't matter that our lives will come to an end. The fact that we're all eventually going to die has no relevance to whether our activities are worthwhile in the here and now: For an ill patient in a hospital a doctor's efforts to alleviate pain certainly does matter despite the fact that 'in the end' both the doctor and the patient (and ultimately all life in the universe) will be dead.

These considerations show that we must create our own meaning for our lives regardless of whether or not our lives serve some higher purpose. Whether our lives are meaningful to us depends on how we judge them. The absence or presence of greater purpose is as irrelevant as the finality of death. The claim that our lives are 'ultimately' meaningless does not make sense because there is no sense in which they could be meaningful or meaningless outside of how we regard them. Questions about the meaning of life are questions about values. We attribute values to things in life rather than discovering them. There can be no meaning of life outside of the meaning we create for ourselves because the universe is not a sentient being that can attribute values to things. Even if a sentient God existed, the value that he would attribute to our lives would not be the same as the value that we find in living and thus would be irrelevant.


What makes our lives meaningful is that we find the activities we engage in to be worthwhile. Our determination to carry out projects we have created for ourselves gives our lives meaning. We feel that life is meaningless when most of our desires which we regard as important are frustrated. Whether we regard life as meaningful or meaningless depends on the degree to which our important desires are frustrated. The judgments that we make about our lives on these points are the same regardless of whether one's life is eternal or not or whether it is part of a greater purpose or not. Perhaps the secret to a meaningful life is to focus on those desires which we can fulfill and diminish those which we cannot--provided that we know the difference between the two.

I feel lucky and absolutely overjoyed that I have this moment here between past and future. So many never get the chance. Yeah, I'll be dust one day, but not until it's my time. Am I worried about it? No. If I can steel my mind to be IN THIS MOMENT for at least part of the day, and not be thinking about the past or planning for the future - I began to feel part of this mean, lonely, destructive big-ass world. And that experience, in the here and now, is so special. No other person will see that moment as I see it. How unique is that?


In closing - I wish to leave this world a better place than it was when I was born. As long as I contribute to the lives of others, I think I am doing that. As long as I do not compromise my principles, I am happy.

Too long, sorry - :sm (57):Excellent essay, Meat. :sm (18):

 

[Meatpie]

Ohhh so cute thoughts I wanna hug you.

It was long but easy and enjoyable read.

I am not nihilistic, as I said I thinkg there is a purpose in life.

But it also makes me sad that all this is gonna be destroyed.

I had a boyfriend who studied chemistry, biology and physics in Indianapolis. He came to live back in Bulgaria because he said he couldn't live in a country which waged meaningless wars on innocent people/nations.

Mind you that were his words, not mine and they don't represent my view.

So we both love biking. We talked on skype before we set off and he used to say, "lets move those muscles and give off some energy and contribute to the total entropy of the universe!"

LoL

That was so insane to say and so true. I loved it and we would go on our bikes from morning till dusk in the summer.

I got home absolutely exhausted but while I was in the shower I thought, "well, there is my purpose in the life. I eat breakfast, then burn the energy, release heat and contribute to the total entropy of the universe."

LoL

 

[JMsidious]

You are special and unique Meat. No one can contribute to entropy in the same way you can! :sm (43):

 

[Darkside]

Why waste time worring about tomorro, when today is complicated enough and yesterday is history.
I would like to be around at the end, even if it is to scream, well they never saw that comming, if they have it all wrong and they probably will.

 

[JMsidious]

Why waste time worring about tomorro, when today is complicated enough and yesterday is history.
I would like to be around at the end, even if it is to scream, well they never saw that comming, if they have it all wrong and they probably will.

Exactly - Now is all we have.

 

[Entilzha]

As the old saying goes:

"Eat, drink and be marry, for you could be dead tomorrow!!"

 

[Meatpie]

lol dude

 

[verlup1]

Why waste time worring about tomorro, when today is complicated enough and yesterday is history.
I would like to be around at the end, even if it is to scream, well they never saw that comming, if they have it all wrong and they probably will.

I would like to be around in the end too. It might be an awesome spectacle.
I heard that the sun is expanding like Meatpie said and sometime will burn our planet. I also heard that we are slowly moving further away from the sun, as our universe is expanding. Maybe they'll cancel each other out. After the sun expands to capacity it's supposed to shrink down and become a black hole.
Also our very own galaxy, the Milky Way, is theoretically orbiting a super massive black hole!
Maybe we'll all be sucked in someday!!!

 

[Meatpie]

Hey verlup, the sun is not expanding, not yet. Otherwise we will be toast. The sun is on its main sequence, slowly and patiently fusing hydrogen into helium in its core.

Gradully it will become brighter and hotter. Oceans will evaporate in around 1 mln years which is relatively short period on geological timescales.

When the Sun exhausts the fuel at its core - hydrogen in about 5 mln years it will become enormous and gobble up the earth.

The sun doesn't have enough mass to form a black hole after that so it will shrink and cool down into a white dwarf.

Only stars with several solar masses are able to form black holes and neutron stars.

You are right that there is a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. It has been observed with radio telescopes and in visible light in 2008.

Currently it is not "feeding" so its not dangerous. But when the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy merge, the supermassive black holes at their centres will aslo merge and the will become active again. This is called active galactic nucleus (AGN).

This is dangerous because these send powerful jets of highly energetic radition which can destroy to ozone layer of the Earth even though we are light years away.

And one final point.

The universe is expanding as you said yes but whats even more striking is that is accelerating.

That doesn't mean the space between the sun and the earth is increasing.

This is valid in the present era only at relatively large scales (roughly the scale of galactic superclusters and above). At smaller scales matter has clumped together under the influence of gravitational attraction and these clumps do not individually expand, though they continue to recede from one another. The expansion is due partly to inertia (that is, the matter in the universe is separating because it was separating in the past) and partly to a repulsive force of unknown nature, which may be a cosmological constant. Inertia dominated the expansion in the early universe, and according to the ΛCDM model the cosmological constant will dominate in the future. In the present era they contribute in roughly equal proportions.

Here is a good clip I rcommmend

http://spacegeek.org/ep7_flash.shtml

 

[JMsidious]

Hey verlup, the sun is not expanding, not yet. Otherwise we will be toast. The sun is on its main sequence, slowly and patiently fusing hydrogen into helium in its core.

Gradully it will become brighter and hotter. Oceans will evaporate in around 1 mln years which is relatively short period on geological timescales.

When the Sun exhausts the fuel at its core - hydrogen in about 5 mln years it will become enormous and gobble up the earth.

The sun doesn't have enough mass to form a black hole after that so it will shrink and cool down into a white dwarf.

Only stars with several solar masses are able to form black holes and neutron stars.

You are right that there is a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. It has been observed with radio telescopes and in visible light in 2008.

Currently it is not "feeding" so its not dangerous. But when the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy merge, the supermassive black holes at their centres will aslo merge and the will become active again. This is called active galactic nucleus (AGN).

This is dangerous because these send powerful jets of highly energetic radition which can destroy to ozone layer of the Earth even though we are light years away.

And one final point.

The universe is expanding as you said yes but whats even more striking is that is accelerating.

That doesn't mean the space between the sun and the earth is increasing.

This is valid in the present era only at relatively large scales (roughly the scale of galactic superclusters and above). At smaller scales matter has clumped together under the influence of gravitational attraction and these clumps do not individually expand, though they continue to recede from one another. The expansion is due partly to inertia (that is, the matter in the universe is separating because it was separating in the past) and partly to a repulsive force of unknown nature, which may be a cosmological constant. Inertia dominated the expansion in the early universe, and according to the ΛCDM model the cosmological constant will dominate in the future. In the present era they contribute in roughly equal proportions.

Here is a good clip I rcommmend

http://spacegeek.org/ep7_flash.shtml

GOOD INFO - I love astronomy. :sm (8):

 

[Art Of War]

Meatpie,

Awesome thread and am requesting more threads like this please as I am very impressed by it and would like very much to learn more about your thoughts regarding these matters and would love to talk to you and other like minded indivudals on these matters

Also, I need some time to process my thoughts on this chain of post before responding.

Need a bit of time to process all the posts and contents of the post, as you properly well know, thinking about stuff like this makes you think in all different angles and subjects all at once....

 

[Art Of War]

Meat Pie,

It is natural to have these initial thoughts.

I know my spirit was hurting badly when I found out that everything I work for will mean nothing at the end. So why even try, when everything goes away forever, why not just stop trying.

Eventually I learnt just to deal with it and do my best to live and leave a positive legacy if I can.

I believe that my consciousness will live on after I due die to a few of the paths I follow specializes in transcending death like the Tibetan monks do, what this involves in training your consciousness so when at the moment you die your consciousness doesn't die out and you can propel it to another place.

What is this other place?

I strongly suspect it is like the visual reality examples when if you die you get trapped in the virtual reality programme for good, therefore in you belief in hell you will end up in hell.

I am taking the Schrodinger's Cat example, which I am confident you have fun reading about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat

eg, I want know to I lift up the box and find out if I am right or wrong.

I personally want to float round in space as energy or my consciousness to travel to other dimensions.

Wonder how much trouble I will be for spilling the beans.

Anyways

Hope I have given a new angle to ponder.

Also, I recommend a book called the Holographic Universe, you might enjoy it.

It poses the theory if we are living in an Holographic universe and it also covers a bit on entrophy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle

Regarding cosmology and quantum physics, realized how rusty I am getting, so will be brushing up on it slowly.

As I said previously, would love to read any other ideas you have regarding this.

SerialStalkerNZ

ps:- If you ever get the chance to read The Holographic Universe, would love your feedback on it.