There's no such thing as free energy. One of the consequences of the uncertainty principle is that small amounts of energy can be 'borrowed' from the vacuum in order to create particles, with the caveat that those particles are unstable and decay after a short time, thus giving the borrowed energy back. The more energy you borrow, the shorter you get to keep it, but you always have to return it sooner or later. Hence there is no net gain or loss, and energy is still conserved overall.
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If we can create stars. Will the universe last forever?
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There's no such thing as free energy. One of the consequences of the uncertainty principle is that small amounts of energy can be 'borrowed' from the vacuum in order to create particles, with the caveat that those particles are unstable and decay after a short time, thus giving the borrowed energy back. The more energy you borrow, the shorter you get to keep it, but you always have to return it sooner or later. Hence there is no net gain or loss, and energy is still conserved overall.
soundscream
Member
I dont think we will be around to even have to worry about this.
LordKasual
Banned
Thank you for this, it was a fascinating read
That's not how any of this works. Of course the universe is so far from heat death right now that it's not even something that you should be considering a solution to. Not that there is one.
There is no such thing as an infinite energy machine. In fact, the process you describe would bring you closer to the heat death of the universe, not farther away.
There is no such thing as an infinite energy machine. In fact, the process you describe would bring you closer to the heat death of the universe, not farther away.
Isn't that because past iron fusion becomes endothermic?
Mama Robotnik
Member
Never read that before, was great! Thanks for posting it!
Well, this fucked my day up
Tal Shiar Agent
Banned
Maybe, maybe not.
That was great. Thanks for posting.
LookAtMeGo
Member
That was a great read. Mind blown.
I think odds are not in our favor.
are those 13+ billion years since the bigbang not enough for any species to have evolved to the point of leaving at least some sort of mark in the sky for us to see?
Definitely not because we require a certain amount of energy to live. Towards the end the density of usable energy will be too low to sustain any life and I expect that threshold to be reached a loooooooong time before the universe reaches its final state.
Noisy Ninj4
Member
IF a species has/will become capable of a feat like that and IF it is in a form we would recognize as artificial, any of them will take millions/billions of years to reach us because light only goes so fast. So, perhaps, but we will probably never see it.
LordKasual
Banned
Perhaps a civilization gets just advanced enough to create virtual/simulated universes, and then they just escape to those? If consciousness is something mathematical that can be solved, then I see no reason why a civilization wouldn't eventually decide to do this.
I used to think that kind of future was silly...but the older I get, the more likely (and logical) it seems to be.
Energy in our universe is limited and Time is relative...but a simulated mathmatical universe (with a debug cheat) could theoretically have essentially infinite energy. And although the lifespan of a simulated universe (in our universe) would still be limited to the lifetime of ours....if you hooked your brain up to a virtual reality that ran for 100 trillion years, it would literally make no difference to anything within that simulation, and would essentially be no different than ours, which also has a foreseeable end due to heat death.
I personally am leaning towards the fermi paradox resolution that we don't see any aliens because any aliens that get advanced enough to master the laws of the universe...simply realize that fighting the laws of the universe isn't nearly as attractive as simply using them to your advantage.
The distances are just so vast, and we can't even see the entire universe.
A very very long time from now even the light from distant galaxies will be pulled away faster than it can get to us, and there will be no way for astronomers of that time to prove that galaxies other than our own exist, even with the best equipment.
shaowebb
Member
At the center of each galaxy is a blackhole. Over time Galaxies collide and new galaxies, planets and stars emerge from the resulting collision and massive release of energies. Its highly probable that the point of impact is indeed the epicenter of the new major galaxy's blackhole.
You'll get your stars from this.
This is what got me into reading Asimov about ten years ago. I still read it every time it crops up.
Vincent Alexander
Member
This sounds like some kind of evil contract with the universe devil.
lastplayed
Member
Get these guys onto it.
Yes.
According to the law of conservation of energy energy can never be destroyed or created. All the energy ever created and emitted by past and future stars will still exist in the universe. And according to Einstein's E = mc2, that energy can be converted back into the mass needed to seed stars.
So yes. It can be done. Theoretically.
According to the law of conservation of energy energy can never be destroyed or created. All the energy ever created and emitted by past and future stars will still exist in the universe. And according to Einstein's E = mc2, that energy can be converted back into the mass needed to seed stars.
So yes. It can be done. Theoretically.
SolidusDave
Member
Short-term we could send out self-replicating robots into the universe that turn all matter they find into new robots (with H tanks). Orchestrated to replentish a source nearby that can be used to form a new sun/fusion reactors.
But eventually you will run out of matter and we would need to find a way to turn energy into matter (that is not negative in net energy).
Then, in a closed system we will be left with increasing the efficiency of harvesting an artificial sun's energy as we will run out of it for aking new matter.
Probably can't use a robot fleet to harvest back all the photons diffused in the universe as the distances are too vast for it to be fast or effiecient enough (and whatever energy source the robots are using needs fuel as well).
Then, in the soup of diluted energy, as time has stopped existing due to entropy reaching it's final state, randomly something will happen that sparks a new Big Bang. But same natural laws within our universe bubble so it will all play out exercise exactly the same again and again.
But eventually you will run out of matter and we would need to find a way to turn energy into matter (that is not negative in net energy).
Then, in a closed system we will be left with increasing the efficiency of harvesting an artificial sun's energy as we will run out of it for aking new matter.
Probably can't use a robot fleet to harvest back all the photons diffused in the universe as the distances are too vast for it to be fast or effiecient enough (and whatever energy source the robots are using needs fuel as well).
Then, in the soup of diluted energy, as time has stopped existing due to entropy reaching it's final state, randomly something will happen that sparks a new Big Bang. But same natural laws within our universe bubble so it will all play out exercise exactly the same again and again.
Also a bunch of your robots after a large enough distance would never be able to get back to you because the expansion of space time is moving things faster away from us than lightspeed.
But you can warp space. Put enough mass in the center of the universe and maybe you can warp it enough to get it to fold into itself making everything close enough to get to.
All Possible Ways
Member
No, you cannot. There is literally not enough matter in the whole Universe to do that. That is why it will expand forever, and not contract back. In fact, the expansion is accelerated because of Dark Energy.
On another note, there's no center to the universe either. All points are equivalent.
Noisy Ninj4
Member
Dark energy and matter are patchworks to current cosmology/physics theories that we know aren't entirely on the mark, I'd say the jury will be out on that one for a while.
A good analogy here is: Where is the center of the surface of a sphere? (The universe isn't a sphere, it's actually flat.)
All Possible Ways
Member
While the particle composition of Dark Matter is unknown, the evidence for it is solid. Same with Dark Energy. Even though it is not understood microscopically, the gravitational behavior is known, so, based on the current data, we know the expansion will remain accelerated.
Oh, ok, I didn't realize you invented the universe.
All Possible Ways
Member
Technically they're not moving so much as the distance between us and them is increasing faster than lightspeed.
Imagine a water balloon hitting the ground. Water goes everywhere making a splash and a number of wonderful patterns due to the inherent chaos in the system. But over time the puddle evens out and slows down, before eventually becoming still. Until some external force interacts with it the puddle stays there, uniform and unchanging.
A dead universe is that stagnant pool of water.
Erm would that not mean we live our lives again? I doubt that is possible.
AlexFlame116
Member
It would be nice but knowing us humans, we'll probably mess it up somehow.
It's always tricky to word that part
Vulcano's assistant
Banned
Whenever something like that would be necessary there is not going to be something you can call human doing it.
Is your username and avatar a reference to Feynman's path integral formulation?
OT: No, as others have recommended, go read The Last Question, it's fantastic. On the whole both the entropy increases, and the energy density of the universe decreases. Under our current understanding of physics, there is no way to reverse this, and any energy expended to reverse the flow of entropy locally would be greater than the energy lost doing so. It's a cycle that ends in the heat death of the universe. Sad but true.
Luckily, this is a process that will take hundreds of billions of years to see noticeable effects. Without the decreasing of energy density, we wouldn't be here right now. Truly, we are living in the golden age of the Universe, where the energy density is low enough so a gamma ray burst or supernova doesn't kill us all, but high enough so that stars can form that support life.
Isn't the argument behind heat death that the universe keeps expanding and matter will spread further apart so that there is less and less matter together? Basically, there is a fixed amount of energy in the universe, but it is getting spread across the expanding universe. Eventually it is spread so thinly that you can barely detect it.
also one of the theories is expansion will become fast enough that even molecules can't stay together. the "observable universe" aka the distance at which anything in the universe can interact with anything else in the universe will trend to being infinitely small.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip
Is not that simple. Energy needs to be ordered in a very specific way for us to use it. Think of fuel for example. It is basically ordered energy. As time goes by, this energy gets disordered and nothing but energy itself can reorder it again. So yeah, energy does not get destroyed, but it does get disordered, which makes it useless.
And people here also forget that we are definitely not going to be here as the same species in millions of years. We (if we happen to survive) will be something else. Homo ----?
Couldn't we possibly use Dark Energy as a source of you know, energy, sometime in the distant future?
Have 2 objects far enough away from eachother that they'll feel the effects of Dark Energy pulling them apart, have them linked with -Something- and presto, you have a nice source of energy!
I need to expand on that -something- part, but otherwise I think it's doable...
Have 2 objects far enough away from eachother that they'll feel the effects of Dark Energy pulling them apart, have them linked with -Something- and presto, you have a nice source of energy!
I need to expand on that -something- part, but otherwise I think it's doable...
neurosisxeno
Member
Theoretically, yes. Realistically, not any time soon since we don't even really know what Dark Energy is.
I'm not up on my particle physics but "endothermic" is more of a chemistry term, I think? But essentially yes, you're thinking of this:
Probable estimations put the number of stars in the [visible] universe at about 5-10x the number of all the grains of sand on all the beaches on earth combined.
http://io9.gizmodo.com/are-there-more-stars-than-grains-of-sand-on-the-earths-1471951896
http://io9.gizmodo.com/are-there-more-stars-than-grains-of-sand-on-the-earths-1471951896
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