Thread: What is happening to the universe in the future?

For example, you might find an alien composed of simply thoughts. No physical, just thoughts.

Originally posted by Kaniaz
For example, you might find an alien composed of simply thoughts. No physical, just thoughts.

That could be us in a billion years heh

^
Exactly. There's no reason for us to believe they aren't there just because we don't always see them...there are more ways they could be invisible to our naked eye than we can imagine. I've seen and heard more than enough for me to believe they are real. I don't doubt that there have been more hoaxes than real cases - but from my personal experiences, the real cases are just as mind-blowing as any of the big hoaxes.
but...this is getting a bit off topic

Originally posted by Kaniaz
Yes, we will destroy ourselves. There is an entire selection of epsiodes where we may destroy ourselves, dumb or intended.

Global Warming, where we pratically boil ourselves alive
Everybody knows about it. Problem is, we haven't solved it. A few years more, and the Earth's climate might suddenly just go totally wrong and mess up. It would just be a lifeless, boiled planet, like Venus, for example.

It would take one month. Tempatures jump. The ice caps of the poles crumble, pushing the sea levels up and destroying costal areas. The snow caps on mountains also melt, turning even the small little river into a gigantic mass of water crushing everything in its path. Tornadoes and hurricanes go across the globe, killing thousands of peoples and important buildings. Ships sink, harvests fail. Economics crumble apart. Cities flooded; entire countries would be washed away. Forests turn to desert. Malaria and other tropical disease push northwards to people that aren't immune, killing millions.

Not dead yet? You soon would be.

Within another few years, the situation gets enteriely out of hand. Tempatures just won't stop rising- more and more water on Earth evapaorates, stopping dams from working and cutting power to some areas. The sea level would drop again, although nothing would be left. *

Here's how it goes: As the tempature rises, water evaporates, and our atmosphere gets thicker- causing the tempatures to rise even more in a neverending loop. It's the \"runaway greenhouse effect\". A few more years later, you would be like venus, about 750 degrees celsuis. Nothing, I repeat nothing, would live. And that is going to happen if we don't sort out Global Warming. It's easy enough to think that kind of things won't happen, but it can and WILL if we don't fix it. And it's easy to not do anything- so we might kill ourselves quicker than we think.

Gamma Ray Bursts
When a star is eaten by a black hole, more energy than the sun produces in it's entire lifetime is spewed out at almost light speed, always hitting a planet. If this was to happen to earth, the side facing the GRB would be sterlizied. The atmosphere would boil. Even a blast far away from us in the milky way is no good; it would be too far away to fry us all, but it would mess up our atmosphere, grinding atoms until they were oxygen and nitrogen. And then there would be no more ozone layer. And we all die of sun cancer. If that dosen't kill you, the soot left would.

Nuclear War
Politics is shaky. Countries sometimes come to the brink of a war, possibly a nuclear one. Let's say, let's be optimistic. You survived! Hurrah!

Suddenly, the huge mushroom clouds tower into the sky. All electric goes out because of electro-magnetic effects. This for a start is not good. Of course, millions are already dead from the nukes. For three days it rains deadly radioactive particles that would kill you. In fact, you'd have to stay in a radioactive proof shelter for a year to be able to exit safely. So you've survived that, somehow.

Now the climate messes up, the soot rises into the air. And we suddenly enter a nuclear winter, until we freeze to death. Even Satan would be able to ice skate in hell. And after that, if you ever managed to survive that, you would suffocate in a huge, 1 mile thick blanket of dust covering the entire world. Face it; there's no way you could get out of that.

Germs
Germs are there all the time. And they can kill you. SARS was a nice virus, in virus terms. Okay, it wasn't nice for killing people, but it could of been worse. In the stuart times, across the entire globe, there was a plague. We survived; but would we this time?

You could inerit one of 3 fabulous diseases.
1) Bubonic Plague. 45% Mortality rate, spread by fleas. This is unlikely to be a problem in clean, rat free areas (rat's carry the fleas).
2) Pneumoic Plague. 95% Mortality rate, spread by coughing. You die in your own lung fluid, but that's right after your saliva becomes slimy and red.
3) Septisemic Plague. 100% Mortality rate, spread by blood. You always die within 24 hours of contracting this. Your blood is infected and you die.

Of course, we now have cures for these virri. But it could happen again. SARS dosen't have a cure; but we managed to contain it and stop it from spreading. But it takes one mutation- BAM! You have a super virus that requires 2 years to fine a cure for. By then, everybody would be dead. A few might survive; few and far apart, but inbreds are no good and we would all go insane over time. We may even make it ourselves through genetic enegerneering.

Comets
A comet could smash into us. It wouldn't be good. We all die. Even if it didn't smash into us, our gravity would mess up and we'd ever crash into another planet or land in the sun (of course, if you somehow survived being boiled/stretched and killed on that fantastic journey).

Aliens
Obviously, we will meet aliens. What if they are not friendly? What if they are more advanced than us? Yes, zap, bang, we're all dead by some ultra-scientifc weapon. Nothing we can do about it, those aliens knew more than us.

Strange Matter
Imagine this. One day, you're listening to the radio, when a newflash cuts into your favourite tune.
\"News just in: An outbreak of 'strange matter' has swept across the globe. According to airplanes, the entire of Amer-arrrg.\"
It cuts dead. Odd.
A few second later, you see a grey thing. It consumes your house, goes across the floor, eats you. You are nothing but slime now. Your body ceased to exsist.

Yes, folks, it's strange matter. If somebody creates this strange matter (which is proven to be a real thing that thankfully we haven't got a hold of yet), it consumes everything. Metal, nothing could stop it. Within one minute, the earth is a ball of strange matter. And it would fly out into space, because it is positively charged. Hit a comet? That becomes strange matter which also flies out into space. Hit a planet? The planet gets the same fate as earth. Eventually, the entire UNIVERSE would be dead, unless intelligent aliens knew a way to escape it (we don't).

This wouldn't happen if they were negatively charged. It's a 50:50 chance- make it and hope you make a new discovery, or be the person that killed the universe?

Grey Goo, Nanobots
Read about nanobots, atoms that can mak more of themselves and convert any atom into whatever you want.
What if somebody threw one away? Oops, an entire planet made of grey goo. You would however, get the fun adventure of watching your body get slowly eaten away by it.

My Conclusion
Yes, we will kill ourselves. No, I bet you it won't happen tommorow. But I bet you something will happen within 1,000 years. And in evolution time, that's just about enough to grow yourself an pair of wings. Which would be damned useless, because you wouldn't have enough time to use it anyway, because your 1,000 years would be up, and it's more likely you'd be dead before then anyway.

Global Warming:

This is an example of enviornmental alarmism, just as global cooling was. They want to scare everyone into giving them more money to save the rainforests.

It was actually much warmer in the middle ages than it is now.

Even if the ice caps melted, I doubt the sea level would change much. The Arctic Ice cap is mostly over water, ice has a greater volume than water so if the arctic Ice cap melted the sea level would drop quite a bit. The Antarctic one is mostly on land so it would probably counter-act the dramatic drop in the sea level from the Artic melting and result in something similar to what we have today for sea levels. As for severe weather, I see no reason for an increase in the number of Tornadoes, they are mostly a phenomenon of the Great Plains region due to a collision of currents during severe thunderstorms. While they might become common elsewhere, they wouldn't increase in occurrance unless thunderstorms did, and even so it's not a massive problem. Hurricanes might be though, ocean currents would dramatically change and could cause more or fewer huricanes.

The Ice caps wouldn't melt all at once as the temperature isn't the same throughout the polar regions. This would give humanity a chance to respond and we would survive.

The whole greenhouse effect ignores the fact that this gas also blocks solar radiation from entering our atmosphere as was the basis of global cooling which never materialized because we just don't pollute enough to create the necessary ammounts of gasses for global cooling or global warming. Venus is still hot because of geo-thermal heat and the fact that it's gass layer is so thick that practically nothing gets through either way(that's why it's so bright). Venus may even be in a pre-Earth stage, before our volcanoes became less active and much of the gas they spewed(including water vapor) condensed. If there's anything we should be worried about in our atmosphere, it's the Ozone layer which is deteriorating as a result of both our polution and nature's polution.

Gamma Ray bursts could kill us, and so could Comets, but the apacolypse could come too.

I would bet humanity would survive a nuclear war. Really only population centers(cities over 50,000) and millitary sites would be targeted in a war, they wouldn't try to blanket the entire nation with nukes, that's just wasteful. The Radiatioactive fallout would only affect the area for a few hundred miles down wind of the blast, scince most people have realized that Smaller 1 megaton weapons in clusters are better than one big 60 megaton weapon. There would be global climate change, and it would probably get cooler, but the same thing has happened after gargantuan volcanoes explode(bigger than Mt. St. Helen's) and eventually the world moves on, and i would bet humanity would survive(although billions would die in a global thermonuclear war, maybe a billion from initial impact and fallout and another billion from the resulting economic collapse of he world as the dollar becomes worthless(damn fiat money, but Ft. Knox is nuked as well).

I doubt anyone would use the bomb except maybe terrorists, especially in the modern age of democracies as it would be political suicide. The only place I could see a country using the bomb is China or North Korea if they were invaded and their governments wanted the world to go down with them. Other than that I think we're pretty safe with MAD.

As for germs, an anti-biotic resistant bacterium could be deadly, and a supervirus could kill millions if not billions, but I am sure that humanity would survive any disease, even an aerborne(not coughing or in droplets), virus that kills in days, because we are so spread out, and almost all diseases have people who are naturally resistant to them(for some reason) or whose immune systems can handle them. Theres nothing wrong genetically with inbreds unless there is a genetic disease(like hemophelia) in the family.

Aliens: I think there is a real possibility that life is extremely rare(it definitely seems like it from the evidence that non-evolutionists have presented to me). Even if it is only moderately rare, intelligent life would be much rarer, and it may be physically impossible to travel fast enough from any planet that is home to an alien race to Earth while living. In that case, of course, we couldn't do anything to stop our galaxy from smashing into anotherone or anything else. There is also the possibility that life was created by God and not naturally and that it could have only been created on Earth, or that any other ailien race would find oxygen(a dangerous element which causes our own mortality) deadly and would not want to come here. I think if there were space traveling aliens we would have run into them by now and they probably would have not had such a measured approach to us as a scenario in which UFO's that have been sighted in the past century are really alien craft.

Are you talking about anti-matter or negative matter? I heard something about negative matter being very common in the universe so I doubt we wouldn't have encountered it by now. Anti-matter(matter that spins backwards and is oppositely charged) I think destroys everything in its path, but I don't think it turns everything into anti-matter(only into subatomic particles) a few atoms of this have been created, but it will take a while to do any damage.


Good point about nanobots.

There are two big theories within the realm of the "Big bang" universe. One is that the Universe will continue to expand into infinite, and the other, which I favor, is that the universe will eventually collapse back because of gravity, every single object exerts a gravitational force on every other object so naturally it will eventually stop the expanding matter and it will collapse back and then explode again into another universe. As the matter gets slower time speeds up(thanks relativity) and the universe is pulled back together into one point and then explodes again.

Before any of that happens we are due to collide with another Galaxy and so if we weren't destroyed in a collision, some gama ray bursts would probably find us or something to that effect.

Main point, without divine providence, the Human race will vanish from the Universe, only to be re-created in another universe Zillions of years from now and the cycle will continue forever, unless there really is a God.

As far as what will happen to the physical universe, my astronomy class taught me 3 theories. I don't know a great deal about them, only made a B in that class, but I can share what I remember. The total mass of the universe is supposed to decide its fate: whether or not there will be a "Big Crunch" and another Big Bang.

Closed Universe Theory
If there is enough mass in the universe, it will stop expanding, and begin to contract. Everything will eventually form into one central point that is infinitely small during the "Big Crunch". During this time, all atoms will break apart into protons, neutrons, and electrons, and during the next Big Bang, the universe will be reborn.

Stationary? Universe Theory
The mass of the universe is the right amount to stop expansion, but not start contraction. All galaxies stay in place for eternity, eventually running out of energy and mass, which is slowly expelled into deep space, or sucked into the black holes that theoretically hold each galaxy together.

Open Universe Theory
This is the one that I was told is most likely to happen. The mass of the universe is not enough to cause a collapse, so it keeps expanding for eternity. Almost all energy and matter is expelled into deep space or sucked into those same black holes in the centers of the galaxies, and the entire universe dies, no nothing no more, kaput, done.

This is just what I know from astronomy 106, but honestly, I don't care what happens. I'll be buried on earth most likely, and it will be swallowed by the sun when it begins to die, so the carbon and calcium that was once my bones will be vaporized by the sun long before then. Plus, in a few billion years, wouldn't our ancestors be very unrecognizable? Just look at how much life has changed in the past few million years, not to mention since life began a few billion ago.

Dang, I'm thought out. Gotta go kill brain cells by watching tv now.

Going to space was beyond our reach, going to the moon even farther! What might be out of our reach one day might very well be within reach the next.[/quote]

what if we actually never made it to the moon? maybe its all just a big conspiracy? outer space? nahhhh
theyre lies all lies!