“The cosmos is not infinite, has a beginning and an end”
The fact that everyone around me seems to be persuaded that there is a beginning in time is unnerving to me. In my head, cosmos has always been infinite, and will always be infinite. Even if nothing is there, it will still exist.
The idea that anything before the big bang is considered to not exist has so many things wrong with it that I struggle to internalize it. If matter cannot be made or destroyed, that means that there will always be matter in one form or another.
Because the universe is expanding. If it were finite it wouldn’t be able to expand. Emptiness is still “something”. If we were “at the edge of the universe”, we could still go further from the center, there would just be nothing for as far as we can perceive, maybe even infinitely, but then, we would be there. That makes it “a place”.
Think of “before the big bang” like “South of the South Pole.” It just isn’t a thing, you’re at the furthest point and it doesn’t go further.
And I don’t think there is a true “end” to the universe, as we understand it currently there’s just an expansion forever and at some point all the individual particles rip apart and spread out and nothing could possibly survive in such a situation so it counts as an “end” for all intents and purposes for us, but time itself is infinite.
IIRC the math actually can check out for an always-existing universe (instead of a big bang) but it doesn’t really make sense because you still then have to explain the giant sudden expansion.
I feel like I could talk about this for years, but I got video games to play. The short answer is I don’t feel like I have to know what caused the matter to all be at the same place and then expand to be satisfied with an infinite universe of finite matter. I wish my brain could understand how time as we know it started with the big Bang, but I think I’m slightly too dumb for that.
Someone figured it out how to make, farm and mass produce the Higgs boson, creating microscopic particles that can generate infinite electricity with simple mechanical systems thanks to their high gravity and then humanity starts develop insane tech powered by gravity waves, traveling faster than speed of light becomes possible by switching gravity on and off. Then obviously some company or government make too much of it and collapses into a microscopic blackhole that instantly falls into the center of the earth quickly eating the planet inside out.
That’s how the Earth got destroyed in “The Forge of God.” :)
Plot (spoils about 50% of the book)
A hostile alien probe discovers Earth, builds/grows three wildly different alien races, has them crash one each in the world’s three largest superpowers (one claiming to bring knowledge, one warning of an impending attack, one claiming to seek conquest), while robot ships plant explosives along the Mariana trench, but the primary attack is two singularities, circling earth in a decaying orbit, by the time anyone even begins to theorize about the cause of the anomalous gravity measurements across the world, both are already circling deep under Earth’s crust.
Quantum immortality
Having survived a few suicide attempts I’ve been convinced this is how it actually is. I have no interest in any further attempts because I know I’ll just end up waking up full of regret and possibly maimed.
I read a short story about this, and can’t remember the name but I remember how hollow it made me feel.
https://reactormag.com/divided-by-infinity/
I don’t feel like this is exactly right but it’s hitting some of the same notes. Divided by Infinity by Robert Charles Wilson
!The one I remember ends with the main character essentially becoming the singularity, but this ends a little differently. Equally as sad as I recall though.!<
Dark forest
The dark forest is a scary idea for sure.
The saving grace though is that it doesn’t actually make any sense and can’t really be true. The pure game theory of it all doesn’t really work out. And on top of that, launching an attack on another star system is just an economically fraught endeavor. Given the technology required to accomplish it, it would be far simpler to build an immense Civilization in whatever star system you’re in, there’s no reason for conquest it’s just too expensive.
Honestly, simulation theories are probably scarier because they’re harder to disprove, in fact they tend to get stronger the more data we gather. And they’re scary because should they be accurate, someone could decide to pull the plug on the simulation at any time…
Vacuum decay, or vacuum metastability event is the possibility in simple terms that the universe itself is not in in its ground state. If that’s true, it might spontaneously change to its real ground state. Doing so will change fundamental things like the strength of electromagnetism, the weight of particles and so on. It would literally destroy everything in the universe, and we couldn’t exist in what’s coming after.
Good news, we’re confident, that’s probably not going to happen.
The German Duck People made a video about it:
