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If this gets confirmed, it will be a big deal. The fact that anything in cosmology is changing fast enough to be detected as different in a matter of decades is very strange and would mean we’re wrong about a lot of really significant things.
So, can I stop lying awake at night wallowing in existential dread over the eventual heat death of the Universe or not?
How about wallowing in existential dread over the eventual big crunch with a contracting universe, black holes merging together, maybe with everything ending in a huge fireball?
Yes, I suppose I could, but it’s just not the same, you know? Sure, perhaps the thermalization of the chaotic flaming furnace of a big crunch will ensure all remnants of the prior Universal state is eradicated just as effectively as the cold uniform isotropic order of heat death, but a big crunch harbors the hope of a new cyclic beginning. Before you know it, you’re veering into Penrose-ish optimism about the whole thing, and how’s that going to keep anybody awake all night shivering in horror?
How about wallowing in existential dread with a friend?
Not. It will be refuted again. It’s how they stay in business.
I hope they find some health care out there in space for us to have.
So, will they have to give the Nobel back, or did it start slowing down after 2011? This question is fundamental to our understanding of the future and the past.
Bungee universe confirmed
What are the implications of this?
You know how it’s super depressing that the stars will eventually get so distant that you won’t be able to see any of them so beings born in the far future might never get to look up at the stars and instead think they are entirely alone in the universe? The implications are that that no longer happens.
