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from the it's-the-end-of-the-world-and-we-know-it dept.
The most comprehensive assessment of the energy output in the nearby universe reveals that today's produced energy is only about half of what it was 2 billion years ago. A team of international scientists used several of the world's most powerful telescopes to study the energy of the universe and concluded that the universe is slowly dying.
"We used as many space- and ground-based telescopes as we could get our hands on to measure the energy output of over 200,000 galaxies across as broad a wavelength range as possible," Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) team leader Simon Driver, of the University of Western Australia, said in a statement. The astronomers created a video explaining the slow death of the universe to illustrate the discovery.
A chance to roll out your cosmology humor...
(Score: 3, Funny) by ilPapa on Wednesday August 12 2015, @06:23PM
I just came in from the back yard and my amaryllis are also dying.
So it goes.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Wednesday August 12 2015, @08:08PM
"My son calls and tells me the good news. And you call this living?"
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Thursday August 13 2015, @05:26AM
It's all over man. It's allll over.
Just smoke a doobie, sit down and wait for it all to end.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by captain_nifty on Wednesday August 12 2015, @06:27PM
Thought this was a known outcome, the heat death of the universe, laws of thermodynamics type stuff.
Good for them doing some scientific measurements, but this seems like it only confirms the known outcome, and maybe gives us a data point to know where we are on the curve.
(Score: 5, Funny) by ikanreed on Wednesday August 12 2015, @06:42PM
Observational verification of a theory?!?! WHAT KINDA SCIENCE IS THIS?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday August 12 2015, @07:34PM
The article doesn't seem to explain how they arrived at the conclusion.
If I'm reading between the lines correctly, they categorized galaxies they could see through a telescope by distance. So since the farther away they are the longer their light takes to get here, you're observing them J Random Long Unit of Time in the past, and apparently with math they can figure out how much energy they have from the spectra of the stars?
Considering how much of a sci fi nerd I am and that I had to stop and think about it for a minute, I think they really could have written the article a lot better.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 12 2015, @11:40PM
No, you're right. The article was very thin. I pitched it as a chance for fun geek humor.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2015, @05:30PM
It's a new data point, but there's still insufficient data for a meaningful answer.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Freeman on Wednesday August 12 2015, @06:32PM
"All in all, Hubble reveals an estimated 100 billion galaxies in the universe or so, but this number is likely to increase to about 200 billion as telescope technology in space improves . . ." That's a sample size of an estimated 0.000002 to 0.000001 percent. That's like saying the sky is falling, because I felt a rain drop.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday August 12 2015, @06:34PM
Forgot to include the source: http://www.space.com/25303-how-many-galaxies-are-in-the-universe.html/ [space.com]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2015, @02:43AM
So if I put about a million grains of two-colored rice in a bin and shake it up real good. I then pull out grains from different parts of the bag, say about 100, and I see that they are about 50/50 in proportion, are you telling me that I'm likely to find that they are in much different proportions if I counted all million of them? I'm not a betting man, but I would feel pretty comfortable stating that they colors are roughly equally proportionate.
How many grains of rice are you suggesting I need to pull to feel confident? What if I am only allowed to pull a handful? I'm only allowed to say that I haven't a clue what the proportions are because I can only pull such a small sample?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2015, @06:36AM
FTFY. I wouldn't be surprised if it was different proportions, if the bag was sitting there long enough the heavier type of grain would have sunk towards the bottom where you couldn't reach. Unless you are proposing two different colored grains with exactly the same weight, which will need justification.
Statistics and Reality. David and Sarah Kerridge. Nov 21, 1998. Based on a series of postings to the Deming Electronic Network. The sections correspond to the ten original messages.
http://pkpinc.com/files/Statistics_and_Reality.pdf [pkpinc.com]
No idea if Deming really claimed all that, but in principle it is correct.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday August 13 2015, @07:04AM
Note that homegeneity and isotropy of the universe are treated by physicists as an axiom. Physicists *assume* there is nothing special about the local universe when doing cosmology. Fundamental stuff like conservation of momentum and conservation of angular momentum come from this axiom. It may be that this is not true on the large scale, but presumably the paper authors treat this as an axiom implicitly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2015, @08:35AM
I see. So on very small and very large scales that humans cannot directly sense there is homogeneity, but at the intermediate level all we experience is heterogeneity. It also happens to simplify the math, just as humans would like because we evolved to be as lazy as possible. It sounds anthropocentric, like humans are building tools and designing experiments based on that simplifying assumption that may be incapable of detecting deviations. I'm not criticizing, but how could that possibility be ruled out?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2015, @05:20PM
At the largest scales we can observe, the universe is very homogeneous. For example, the inhomogeneities in the cosmic microwave background are so small that it took a rather big effort to measure them.
Note that when considering cosmic scales, galaxies, and even galaxy clusters, are microscopically small.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @01:01AM
When you're talking particles, they don't sink down. There is a whole research area having to do with this. Not surprisingly, the cereal manufacturers research this because they want their raisins or marshmallow bits to be uniformly distributed. Turns out if you put big heavy objects in with a bunch of little light objects and shake it up, the big heavy objects rise to the top.
Let it be two different kinds of rice anyways. They aren't going to separate themselves. As for the red bead comments, 10 +/- 1 is well within the error to support my argument. OP was claiming that you pulled from such a small sample that you can't make any valid claims.
(Score: 5, Funny) by miljo on Wednesday August 12 2015, @06:36PM
Since its creation made a lot of people angry and was regarded as a bad move anyway...
One should strive to achieve, not sit in bitter regret.
(Score: 3, Funny) by scruffybeard on Wednesday August 12 2015, @06:48PM
We apologize for the inconvenience.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Freeman on Wednesday August 12 2015, @07:11PM
I never realized how utterly hopeless life is from an atheistic world view until I read the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series of books. The last book was rather depressing and would have been only more so, if I was atheist.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Touché) by miljo on Wednesday August 12 2015, @07:21PM
I don't know, as an atheist, I tend to have a fairly positive world view and I thought the HGTTG books were extremely funny.
I don't really feel the need to ask any particular deity to keep an eye on my mortal soul. But you're free to believe whatever you'd like.
One should strive to achieve, not sit in bitter regret.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tangomargarine on Wednesday August 12 2015, @07:36PM
I seem to recall that Douglas Adams was kind of grumpy about how they wanted him to keep writing HHGG books for the fourth and/or fifth books, so maybe that explains why #4 really had nothing to do with the rest of the series and #5 was...well, I rather enjoyed it, but admittedly it was a bit dystopian.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday August 12 2015, @08:15PM
**Spoiler Alert**
A bit dystopian? The end result being the "Final Destruction" of earth, so some bureaucrat can check off his list. What's more, is that the destruction of the earth wasn't good enough, they also killed off, Arthur, Trillian, Tricia (alternate universe Trillian), Ford, and Random (Dent's daughter). That's about as dystopian as it gets. The only glimmer of hope was Zaphod escaping, but seriously he wasn't the most trustworthy of characters or that caring either. Though, apparently upon looking up the series again to refresh my memory, there is a sixth Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Book. This one written after Douglas Adam's death by Eoin Colfer with the approval of Adams' widow.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday August 12 2015, @08:23PM
I'm a bit afraid to read the non-DA one in case it's crap.
Meh, the series started with Earth getting blown up so ending on the same thing was just completing the circle. (insert metaphysics technobabble here)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2015, @05:11AM
He was going thru a bad stretch (divorce?), and he dumped it into "Mostly Harmless".
(Score: 2, Informative) by aristarchus on Thursday August 13 2015, @08:47AM
Yes, your existence is only the result of one of a myriad of possible random situations, and your extinction will be the same. There is no plan for your life, no purpose to your existence, and if you cannot handle that, you should kill yourself now, or become a member of one of a multitude of organizations that will tell you that none of it is true! Then you can kill yourself, throwing yourself under the juggernaut, opening a sarin gas container in a subway, going to join a comet with really nice new shoes, or just drinking the cool-aid or pressing the button that says "Valhalla now!" Or you could wait for the Earth to be destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass. I fail to see how Douglas Adams' version is the most depressing of these. (Oh, by the way, I talked to God, and he doesn't know you. Also said he never told Ted Cruz to run for president, or GW Bush to invade Iraq. Amazing, huh? )
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2015, @07:07PM
Does anyone know the paper they are basing this off of? I tried searching Simon Driver and got to this site:
http://www-star.st-and.ac.uk/~spd3/pubs.html [st-and.ac.uk]
I clicked for publications and there were like five published in the future...
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday August 12 2015, @07:39PM
I clicked for publications and there were like five published in the future...
Wrong article ;)
Time-Symmetric Formulation of Quantum Theory Provides New Understanding of Causality [soylentnews.org]
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 5, Funny) by EQ on Wednesday August 12 2015, @07:26PM
Has Netcraft confirmed that the universe is dying?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Wednesday August 12 2015, @10:21PM
Is not the release of Windows Ten enough confirmation of the death of the universe/end of the world as we know it?
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Thursday August 13 2015, @02:00AM
Shouldn't today's produced energy be zero? I thought the only time energy might have been produced might have been with the big bang?
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday August 13 2015, @02:25PM
Matter is converted to energy all the time.
(Score: 1) by q.kontinuum on Thursday August 13 2015, @02:44PM
E=mc^2, not E ~ mc^2. Which means matter is not just somehow equivalent to energy, but actually is energy, and vice versa. This goes so far that a mechanic wrist-watch, after it's wound up (and therefore, as a system, contains more energy) gains m=e/(c^2) mass. There is no gain of energy by converting mass to energy, this is just a conversion of one form of energy to another form of energy.
What I don't know/understand at all is how this works on quantum level (Quantum fluctuation [wikipedia.org])
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2015, @04:51PM
In General Relativity, energy is only conserved locally; the energy of the universe as a whole can indeed change.
(Score: 1) by q.kontinuum on Thursday August 13 2015, @06:26PM
The article states "additional energy is constantly being generated by stars as they fuse elements like hydrogen and helium together" (I just checked it). This is simply wrong, and a bit disappointing really, since the aspect of energy-conservation of the 1st law of thermodynamics [wikipedia.org] is base-knowledge, iirc taught in 7th or 8th grade at school and therefore should be considered general knowledge.
Normally I wouldn't bitch on about it, but this seems to be an obvious flaw in the original article on livescience.com [livescience.com], and was copied unquestioned to several "news"-sites. I understand that livescience is not for scientists but for the interested laymen, but phrasing it "energy is constantly released by" instead of "additional energy is constantly being generated by" would not make the article any harder to understand and would embed the understanding that fusion releases energy, and doesn't generate it. It's articles like this that make people believe in perpetuum mobiles etc., since they read on a "science"-site that energy is produced.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Thursday August 13 2015, @07:01PM
Btw:Was the rating system changed? Since today I see my comments rated +1 instead of +2, although neither my karma nor my settings changed. For older comments I see default +1 plus karma modifier +1, for new posts I don't see any information how the rating is assembled.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday August 13 2015, @01:46PM
I don't have the energy I used to, either.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience