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That's cute and all, but it ain't gonna be birds and deer who gets life off this rock once the Sun starts threatening to swallow it in a few billion years. We're screwing up badly in the short term, but we're the only hope Earth life has in the long term.
The heat death of the universe is inevitable anyway 🤷♂️
So? Death from old age is inevitable too, that doesn't mean I'm going to stop breathing or eating. All of life is just postponing the inevitable, but just because the inevitable is inevitable doesn't mean we should stop postponing.
If human beings were the only intelligent life in the universe, then the difference between being wiped out by the sun versus the heat death of the universe is so mind boggling big, that it beggars belief.
So many - near infinite - civilisations could come and go.
Perhaps one of them would find a way to endure.
Oh good, just what I needed with my comics. A side of existential dread.
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Where did this heat death of the universe idea originate? First time I've heard of it here in this thread.
It came from Kelvin's work on thermodynamics in the 1850s, and has been refined by many scientists since then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe
It's also the subject of a famous short story by Isaac Asimov: http://www.thelastquestion.net/
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because I hated Reddit and this is rapidly becoming Reddit 2.0, just without spez
lmao this place is already worse than reddit. Somehow more reddit than reddit.
I recommend investing your time into a different instance and letting this one collapse.
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this is rapidly becoming Reddit 2.0, just without spez
Becoming? Always has been.
In this case, it sounds more like a them thing.
You're assuming an eternal universe (as opposed to, e.g., a big crunch), which seems likely given the observed accelerating expansion of the universe.
Earth will become a molten blob in a few billion years... then over a billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion times later...
Whatever lives on Earth in a billion years from now, if it spreads out, will have a few billion times more billions of years to live.
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Love seeing someone act like a smug know-it-all while being ignorant to a pretty basic concept in cosmology.
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I don't understand if this is sarcasm or if some people are actually that dense.
When the tectonic plates collide again to form another supercontinent, it will create enough heat to kill off most, if not all, mammals. And it will happen before the sun destroys everything, probably in around 250 million years or so.
250 million years?
Damn, guess I don't need to bother cleaning
How?
The collision itself will generate heat. And a super continent with less water will also absorb more heat energy without having water near its center.
Mammals’ Time on Earth Is Half Over, Scientists Predict https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/25/science/future-earth-warming-mammal-extinction.html?unlocked_article_code=i-Vz9jIKNFOAz9W461kSfuXdwSaNLqY1OA6-RZUjsXXCFqdC3ZYi5fzATecJES9S5U55iemPY0VVELjOxBte3G2-M5XW3LZ5x0wuvCGDe85590sumzR9EYMPibkT_EUEnWQ65UT0fgYejXoFiqiwwLPaO5VtNWlz187tW6MRjycS3Q4iSAbvCHj4Ga9QI6WR-xod26K-0yKDaHB_iqod3s9o3MBh722dNZmHIUBcVwG_iJ-ocfLFLQFJrSs2kS0JihLKWpETwiCd9EcgcbwCh58HVCY1sN0wg-wX1ThT0TbY5CZCdDXsKwQYsG-F6efLTTF0aSaRxIudb1g9WoWdhmRF4NBChEigjxDOJO2NM2Y2&smid=nytcore-android-share
Interesting read thanks for the link. Had heard none of that before.
eh, birds are already very intelligent. one of the species wil probably end up creating technology at some point (assuming all humans die without ending all life on earth)
There is enough time for another intelligent species to evolve after us, the problem is that we've already used up all the easily accessible fossil fuels. That means they won't have the energy sources necessary to have an industrial revolution and will be stuck at a pre-industrial tech level forever (or rather until the oceans boil off).
Is that true? My understanding was that there's still plenty of coal, oil, etc, we just can't keep burning it cause of the greenhouse effect
There are still plenty of fossil fuels, but we've used up the deposits that are easily accessible with 1700s technology.
Ah, thanks. I guess our technology probably wouldn't be around by the time another species replaces us, but it'd be cool if they could just pick up where we left off technologically (of course, they'd have to make good choices to not end up like we did except way faster, and I don't have that much optimism lmao).
Then again, I wonder if there'd be new fossil fuel deposits by then. I mean, if the conditions were right and given enough time. I don't know a whole lot about how this all works, it's fun to think about though.
Then again again, maybe if they had no fossil fuels, they could sidestep the whole anthropogenic (pls don't bully my spelling, I have no idea) climate change problem. I'm sure it would take longer, but maybe they'd eventually figure out how to produce lots of energy without ruining the planet for themselves (or at least ruin it differently than we did). ¯\(°_o)/¯
I wonder if there’d be new fossil fuel deposits by then.
Probably not. Coal is basically trees that didn't rot, and the reason they didn't rot is that there were no microorganisms that could digest wood at the time. Between the evolution of wood and the evolution of organisms that could digest it, dead trees would just pile up on top of each other and sink into the ground under the weight of new layers of dead trees above them. Now that there are microorganisms that digest wood and dead trees rot away, new coal is not forming.
Oil does continue to form in some ocean areas where there is a layer of water without any oxygen on the ocean floor. Since these areas support no life, any organic remains that descend to the bottom (mostly plankton) remain unconsumed and eventually get buried and turn into oil. But it is a slow process. Estimating oil reserves is notoriously difficult, but it seems there's about as much left in the ground as we've burned in the last fifty years. So in other words, four billion years of oil formation gets you about a century or two of industry. Since the Sun is about halfway through its lifespan, that means the Earth can potentially create enough juice for one more industrial civilization like ours. That's assuming that those oil reserves are allowed to build up and don't just get used up piecemeal by smaller civilizations arising in the interim. And also assuming that that final civilization is even able to make use of that oil, which is much harder to handle than coal (extraction, refining, transportation, etc.), without using coal as a stepping stone. And also assuming that no anaerobic microorganisms evolve that can survive on the ocean floor without oxygen and consume those organic remains, which could put a stop to oil formation just like wood-eating microorganisms put a stop to coal formation. Yeah, that seems like a lot of ifs to me...
damn that's interesting. Thanks for the science! :)
It's only recently been proven untrue... IIRC... because it apparently turns out crude oil is actually the poop of a particular ancient microbe that is still around and that's partially (along with Oil Fracking) why we still have fossil fuels and why a far future non-human civilization will have plenty of fossil fuels to work with.
You're right, though, we have 5x more fossil fuels than have been burnt since the beginning of the industrial revolution. If we DO use the rest, the climate would be so unrecoverable that 99% of multicellular life will die, but even the most corrupt oil executive would be dead years before the last animal because most - especially the wealthiest - humans need agriculture to eat, and if shit hits the fan the poor outnumber the rich and the crop-killing pests outnumber the poor.
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OK but then they'll fuck it up worse.
A thousand times this.
I've used this argument before arguing with hippies about "integrating with nature".
Any society that isn't on track to developing the science and engineering necessary for interstellar tavel is a dead end.
It's a tragic waste of human intelligence to keep making the same bamboo huts indefinetly.
So some noble savage can live their lives on repeat for hundreds or millenia, and that's somehow better than inventing an arc that can save every form of life on this unique Planet?
Bloody stupid hippy nonsense.
What makes life on another planet more worthwhile than life here? Also humans didn't take that long to evolve so there's plenty of opportunity for a successor to us to reach the stars in a way that causes less suffering. For that matter, we could have simply taken a couple hundred extra years to get there and reduced human suffering by like a thousandfold with a more equitable society. Bloody stupid capitalist nonsense.
there’s plenty of opportunity for a successor to us to reach the stars
No, there isn't. We've already used up all the easily accessible sources of fossil fuels, so whoever comes after us won't have the energy sources necessary to have an industrial revolution and will be stuck at a pre-industrial tech level forever.
Great! So they'll skip the fossil energy era and jump directly to renewables? We paved the path for them to avoiding another climate change.
We're having quite a bit of trouble making that transition even with the benefits of a couple centuries of fossil-fueled industry. I find the idea of jumping directly from horse-drawn wagons to wind turbines and solar panels rather implausible.
That’s right, if we kick the bucket, a new intelligent civilization would not have the resources to advance at our pace. They may figure out the atom, but they won’t have the resources to utilize their knowledge. Then there is the ever looming threat of a disaster, and these preindustrial civilizations will be wiped out with zero warning or preparation.
Also: what are the chances a species similar to us in intelligence will emerge again on this rock? I’m going to bet it’s pretty darn tiny.
You guys make some giant assumptions....
Feel free to name one or two examples and show how and why they're incorrect.
Write for me 4000 words on how technological advancement is a linear progression that always follows the same path and needs the same exact external stimuli to occur.
4000 words? Oh please, that can be done in a hundredth of that: The laws of physics are constant, and more advanced technologies have energy requirements that must be met by preceding technologies. At the same time, each technology also has to offer enough tangible benefits to be worth pursuing on its own.
What makes them 'savage'?
We're not going to make it until the sun swallows the earth. If there's anything related to us left at that point then it wouldn't be recognisable to us.
But if they're coming directly from us, what's the difference
Amen, all those movies where "All tech stops working, people learn to do things for themselves! Utopia acheived!" are garbage
As individuals, a lot of people are content to live a simple life of prosperity. They have a basic job, and a small family, and some basic luxuries - and they call it enough. Some people have a one-eyed focus on increasing their wealth throughout their lives; but not everyone is like that. People generally recognise that their lives are finite. Some try to aim for some kind of imaginary high-score in their life, and others just live a 'normal' life.
I'm now making an analogy. As a species, we can recognise that are time is finite; and we can choose to live that out in a stable simple prosperity, where we just look after our world (house) and get what we need for some basic luxuries, and be content. We could have a billion years of that. It's a very long time. Or... we could aim for endless growth. We could consume as much as possible, and always aim for more. As we run out of resources and livable habitat on Earth, we must look to interstellar travel and spread to other planets. I don't necessarily think that is a better choice.
When I was young, I use to think that humans needed to settle on other planets. But I don't think that any more. Partially because I learnt about special relativity, and decided that unless we're very very wrong about science so far, having connected colonies on other planets is not possible. But also because I realised that there is no intrinsic goal to spread human life as much as possible. There are other things of value. We don't need that particular goal. I also use to think that personal immortality would be a good thing. I don't really think that any more.
Until you find out unity with nature allows humans to transcend human form and ascend to a higher plane of existence. While technology fights a losing battle to compete with the universes slow entropy into darkness. Oops.
I'll take one of whatever this guy ordered
I call bullshit. You know why?
I literally had a dream that predicted the worst year of my life, 5 years in advance, by having a friendly dream character tell me I died and went to a dream afterlife.
The catch was that I am autistic and I acted and act much like I did when I was 10 years old, and that was reflected by me taking the form of the kid sidekick in the fictional world that I was trying to write a story about at the time. I was told I was adorable and intelligent-looking (I was not the smartest kid but I was well-read and paid attention to what was in my textbooks) and not particularly unlikeable, and all of that was because that dream afterlife was a place where your personality determined your appearance. Yet despite the fact that I did not look monstrous or untrustworthy and that people who died quickly realised that in the dream world people are exactly what they appear to be, I was warned people would discriminate against me anyway, and there was nothing I or my apparent dream friend could do; said dream friend told me they thought I at least deserved to know it would happen and to just try and enjoy eternity, since I would never wake up, but that it would be hard because people would hate me unfairly.
I woke up anyway. That's not why I call BS. I recorded that dream in a text file and I keep backups of all my unique files.
I'll finish editing this soon but my phone is at 2% battery...
Please do.
I will say, though, I don't really have any stakes in this argument especially when you consider my contribution to humanity will probably be dead end evolutionary branch responsible for creating higher order carbon based polymers.
5 years later, sure enough, everything I value became critic-repellant in the writing industry; "you have to grow up", "dark and edgy is realistic and realistic is mandatory", "escapism is evil", "children are spoiled little shits", etc.
I now am extremely certain the dream characters who talk to me are avatars of my unconscious. I know that sounds really weird and I have no proof, so believing me on that detail can be taken with a grain of salt. As for my sanity, if I was crazy, I'd be seeing or hearing my unconscious while awake, I swear this is just in dreams that this being talks to me and it gives advice like "don't worry about the average fictional character, they're just inanimate puppets, it's the ones who are people's favorite hats to wear that - like you - are important because some hats are helmets that keep the wearer alive" rather than "KiLl EvErYoNe It WiLl Be FuN!!!11!1!" so my best guess is my unconscious mind is trying to communicate with me on a level my conscious and subconscious mindstates can understand.
I damn well know there's more to dreams than they appear, that's WHY I call BS, because a year ago, a dream character that was the first character to appear in two different dreams of mine since ever, and I asked it "Is there really a dream afterlife?" and it said "No."
I also asked it in another dream to be sure, even broadening from "dream afterlife" to "any afterlife at all", this time using an old red landline telephone and voice contact. In a snooty french accent, it confirmed and warned me very strongly and angrily not to ask again. The only upside is it said it didn't know for sure whether it is possible to create an afterlife using technology and/or biology.
I'm sorry but unless someone builds one, there is no afterlife or ascension to another plane. I literally have the info directly from the source.
I think Harry DuBois just traveled to our reality to write this post after taking a large amount of "Magnesium"
I wish I was making this up or delusional or cynical. I want more than anything for souls to be immortal. I would have no problem living in my dreams forever, but I'm not the one who said it (or if my unconscious counts as being me, I'm not able to type a fediverse post using the part of my mind which is more aware of why there's no afterlife).
If anyone can post scientific evidence disproving how I've come to interpret what I experienced, I'm content to let that have the final say rather than make any attempt to dispute it. For now, I know it sounds insane but this is literally a Cassandra Truth, so at least recognise that I don't expect you to believe it's the truth, only to recognize that if ascending to the astral plane could be done, I would be persuing doing so at this very moment.
I'm sorry, but I know what happened between me and my unconscious mind, and I'm not just relying on my memories but also my now-decade old dream logs. I asked it for the honest truth. It said the truth is what I feared, death is not (yet?) followed by anything but oblivion.
To be fair, if you're not happy about that concept, neither am I because fuck the Atheists and screw the guy who wrote His Dark Materials. I'm just one poorly-recieved sci-fi writer, though, I never even got to go to university. I am not qualified or capable of building an afterlife, or determining whether souls are singular entities unto themselves or merely a process that our minds use as "the third rail of the subconscious train of thought", or testing if continuity of self across time is real or illusionary.
Aside from that, I will say one thing; I have never ingested hallucinogens, at least not to my knowledge, and I don't go to parties or have any IRL friends. So no, you don't get to say I'm high when the only way I got OUT of the maddening despair I experienced in 2017 was because my dreams helped pull me out of a complete mental breakdown. Fight me, I don't care if you think I'm telling the truth and I don't need you to believe your unconscious mind is somehow independently acting on your behalf, but don't fucking tell me I'm not sober when I've been completely sober of everything including tobacco and alcohol my entire life.
Lieutenant...
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