Colonize space or face extinction

[Russell Nash]

Colonize space or face extinction: Hawking | World | News | Toronto Sun

Extinction!!!!!!

Abandon Earth—Or Face Extinction | Stephen Hawking | Big Think

[Acutely decayed]

“but this is only to postpone the day of reckoning, because sooner or later both life and mind will have to reckon with the disintegration of the ultimate horizon, when roughly one trillion, trillion, trillion (10^1728) years from now, the accelerating expansion of the universe will have disintegrated matter itself, terminating the possibility of embodiment” – Brassier - Nihil Unbound

To be fair, this is enough time for even me to put a sizable dent in my to-read pile ;).

Seriously though, hope someone is working on this, don’t leave it to the last minute….

[Russell Nash]

The End of Everything | Universe Today

[Acutely decayed]

although there are always possibilties, as I am sure people know, if you are not an easy quitter...

“The tiniest of particles -- the electron and its anti-particle, the positron -- shall live on, current theory suggests. No process of decay can find purchase on their infinitesimal scales, lever them apart into smaller fragments. The electron shall dance with its anti-twin in swarms: the lightest of all possible plasmas. "

“Intelligence could conceivably dwell in such wispy magnetic consorts. Communication will take centuries . . . but to the slow thumping of the universal heart, that will be nothing."

"In that far future, dark beyond measure, plasma entities of immense size and torpid pace may drift through a supremely strange era""

Gregory Benford - Fantasy and Science Fiction Jul95, Vol. 89 Issue 1, p114, 12p

[Russell Nash]

Quote Originally Posted by Acutely decayed

“The tiniest of particles -- the electron and its anti-particle, the positron -- shall live on, current theory suggests. No process of decay can find purchase on their infinitesimal scales, lever them apart into smaller fragments. The electron shall dance with its anti-twin in swarms: the lightest of all possible plasmas. " “Intelligence could conceivably dwell in such wispy magnetic consorts. Communication will take centuries . . . but to the slow thumping of the universal heart, that will be nothing." "In that far future, dark beyond measure, plasma entities of immense size and torpid pace may drift through a supremely strange era"" Gregory Benford - Fantasy and Science Fiction Jul95, Vol. 89 Issue 1, p114, 12p

This was written by Benford in 1995. Dark energy was discovered in 1998-99. And 74 % of everything is dark energy. If we add this ingredient, does Gregory Benford keep thinking the same now? In physics, 15 years of continuous observation is a long time.

Physics is (I would say) totally disoriented today. And it might even be wrong: when I was a kid I heard that we were going to live in space by year 2000, or that we had oil for 50 more years (that was back in the late 70's). In fact, we could start a thread of how many things have changed in our knowledge since we were kids. To give you an example, when I started university in 1986, I asked in a class, what was a quark? The only person that knew, said that it was a hypothetical particle, imagine! That was 1986! We might discover new physics: laws, particles, anything else, in the next coming 50 years, that would refute Hawking's alarming words.

Disoriented, I said. 96 % of the Universe is made out of something unknown. We still haven't discovered The Higgs boson. We might have branes (I still can't understand curved space, imagine!). Hidden dimensions. And unknown particles and physics. Or we might even go back to the concept of "aether". All these unknowns added together make me think that it's still too early to make a prediction, like Hawking does.

The end of the world has been vaticinated since Jesus' times, or earlier. Well, we are still here. My grandfather said that the world was going to end soon; well, he died. My mother said that the world was going to end soon; she died, wrong again. One of my uncles, before an atheist, now a converted Christian, almost dying, says that the world is going to end soon (for him, yes). He says that we see catastrophes everywhere. But, if whatever happens today is a catastrophe, what was the massive death of dinosaurs, or trilobites!!!! Now, Hawking predicts the end of the world. Who is next...........?