Timeline of the Future

[CraigS]

Here ya go .. for all those forward-lookers (dreamers ?):

The timeline of the future …

Ten notable points of interest (for me):

i) 1,000 years — time until the Earth's axial precession makes Gamma
Cephei the North Star.

ii) 5,200 years — time until the Gregorian calendar will be one day out of
step with the Sun's position.

iii) 9,700 years — time until Barnard's Star passes within 3.8 light years
from the Solar System, becoming the Sun's closest star.

iv) 10,000 years — time until the end of humanity, according to Brandon
Carter's Doomsday Argument, which assumes that half of the humans
who will ever have lived have already been born.

v) 50,000 years — according to the work of Burger and Loutre, time at
which the current interglacial will end, sending the Earth back into an ice
age, assuming limited effects of anthropogenic global warming. Also,
time until Niagara Falls erodes away the remaining 20 miles to Lake Erie
and ceases to exist.

vi) 100,000 years — time by which proper motion will render the
constellations unrecognisable. Also, time by which the hypergiant
star VY Canis Majoris will have exploded in a hypernova.

vii) 500,000 years — time by which Earth will most likely be impacted by a
meteorite of roughly 1 km in diameter.

viii) 1.4 million years — Time until Gliese 710 passes within 1.1 light years
of the Sun, potentially disturbing the Solar System's Oort cloud and
increasing the likelihood of a comet impact in the inner Solar
System.

ix) 100 billion years — time until the universe's expansion causes all
evidence of the Big Bang to disappear beyond the cosmic light horizon,
rendering cosmology impossible.

x) 10^12 (1 trillion) years — low estimate for the time until star
formation ends in galaxies as galaxies are depleted of the gas clouds
they need to form stars.
…

The list goes on … its interesting to see how far one can project one's thinking into the future, and compare these listed eventualities with one's accumulated expectations ….. and then, how long it takes before one encounters an unexpected surprise !

… Just thought this was an interesting little mind exercise ..

Cheers

[xelasnave]

Yeh but what happens after that
alex

[multiweb (Marc)]

Doesn't look good for long term investment properties. So the bottom line is we need to work out interstellar travel and sustainability in space eventually. Plenty of time for that(?)

[renormalised (Carl)]

I've seen this page before.....very interesting.

The two point that grab me the most are these....

10^10^10^76.66 years—scale of an estimated Poincaré recurrence time for the quantum state of a hypothetical box containing an isolated black hole of stellar mass.[48] This time assumes a statistical model subject to Poincaré recurrence. A much simplified way of thinking about this time is that in a model where our universe's history repeats itself arbitrarily many times due to properties of statistical mechanics, this is the time scale when it will first be somewhat similar (for a reasonable choice of "similar") to its current state again.

and

10^10^10^10^2.08 years—scale of an estimated Poincaré recurrence time for the quantum state of a hypothetical box containing a black hole with the mass within the presently visible region of our universe.[48] This time assumes a statistical model subject to Poincaré recurrence. A much simplified way of thinking about this time is that in a model where our universe's history repeats itself arbitrarily many times due to properties of statistical mechanics, this is the time scale when it will first be somewhat similar (for a reasonable choice of "similar") to its current state again.

Basically saying this....after a ridiculously long period of time, the Universe will return to a state very similar in which we find it today. Then it'll go through the whole process again, until another ridiculously long period of time after the previous one, it'll return to that same state. And so on and so forth, ad infinitum.

[sjastro]

What no Big Rip?

If dark energy continues to cause the scale factor of the Universe to increase at an accelerated rate, it's speculated the scale factor will approach infinity in a finite period of time.

If this happens we have this proposed scenario.

http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v91/i7/e071301

Regards

Steven

[CraigS]

From the "1 billion to 1 trillion (109-1012) years from now" section …

20 billion years — time until the end of the universe in the Big Rip scenario.[33] Experimental evidence currently suggests that this will not occur.

cheers

[sjastro]

Originally Posted by CraigS

From the "1 billion to 1 trillion (109-1012) years from now" section …



cheers

I'm disappointed. Sounded like a great way for the Universe to end.

I still prefer the Vacuum Metastability Event to annihilate the Universe.

Regards

Steven

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by sjastro

What no Big Rip?

If dark energy continues to cause the scale factor of the Universe to increase at an accelerated rate, it's speculated the scale factor will approach infinity in a finite period of time.

If this happens we have this proposed scenario.

http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v91/i7/e071301

Regards

Steven

If, in actual fact, it's even accelerating at all. Despite some apparent evidence for the acceleration from obs of SN1a in distant galaxies, it's still open to debate as to whether it's real or not.

Even if it is real, if the scale factor reaches infinity in a finite period of time, then that has very important consequences for other theories of reality as well. It puts a huge dent in the MWI...if you've got one particular universe exponentially expanding out to infinite size, it must interfere with all other universes. It basically tears them all apart as well. Then you have the consequence of an infinite expansion over an infinite period of time. Then it completely violates all the laws of thermodynamics and becomes perpetual motion. Something must give

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by sjastro

I'm disappointed. Sounded like a great way for the Universe to end.

I still prefer the Vacuum Metastability Event to annihilate the Universe.

Regards

Steven

Here's something to consider...if the universe is undergoing accelerated expansion, that metastable tunneling event would have practically no influence on the universe as a whole. Remember, the horizon for the region within the bubble of the event is spreading at near the speed of light. Even if the universal expansion remained flat and didn't slowdown, it would take billions of years for it to cover the distance of the observable universe. If the universe is accelerating, it would never swallow the universe as a whole simply because the universal expansion would outpace the expansion of the bubble. If it got to the "big rip" stage, that bubble would be completely insignificant. It'd be like comparing the Planck Length to the size of the total universe.

[sjastro]

Originally Posted by renormalised

Here's something to consider...if the universe is undergoing accelerated expansion, that metastable tunneling event would have practically no influence on the universe as a whole. Remember, the horizon for the region within the bubble of the event is spreading at near the speed of light. Even if the universal expansion remained flat and didn't slowdown, it would take billions of years for it to cover the distance of the observable universe. If the universe is accelerating, it would never swallow the universe as a whole simply because the universal expansion would outpace the expansion of the bubble. If it got to the "big rip" stage, that bubble would be completely insignificant. It'd be like comparing the Planck Length to the size of the total universe.

Inflation theory is considered a form of vacuum metastability event in which case whether the metastability event "outruns" the Universe or not, will depend on how long the Event itself lasts, or the transition period from going from a higher vacuum state to a lower state.

Regards

Steven

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by sjastro

Inflation theory is considered a form of vacuum metastability event in which case whether the metastability event "outruns" the Universe or not, will depend on how long the Event itself lasts, or the transition period from going from a higher vacuum state to a lower state.

Regards

Steven

Yes, that's true.

However, if you have a section of the Universe undergoing such an event, within the Universe itself, and the bubble of that event traveling outwards at near "c", it can only have a finite size at any one time. If the object into which it's expanding is also expanding, but at a much faster rate, even given an infinite period of time, it will never catchup with the larger object's expansion. Not unless the larger object slows down.

If the metastable bubble expanded to encompass the Universe instantaneously, or at a velocity much in excess of the Universal expansion rate, then it could destroy the Universe into which it expanded. It would have to undergo its own inflationary episode.

If the Universe was expanding at an infinite rate, and the nucleating metastable region was also expanding at that same rate, the Universe would always remain infinitely larger than the bubble, no matter even if it was measured over an infinite period of time. Even if that region had begun expansion one attosecond after the Universe had done so and both were expanding at an infinite rate from the very beginning. That's the problem with infinities....they make no common or even "uncommon" sense.