A timeline. A quadrillion years seems like a long time.
8 thoughts on “The Very Far Future”
I noticed the BBC managed to get the global warming crap in there.
Yep, the BBC managed to get global warming BS in there, but the most glaring bit is their reference to C3 photosynthisis and the end of it spelling the end of multicellular life on earth. Note that they don’t say *why* c3 photosynthesis ends (600,000,000 years). Here’s a hint; it depends on something they think is “evil” so they can’t very well mention its importance.
Hmm. Puzzled why the infographic used French/American-style instead of British-style large numbers. Checked on the creators, iibStudio, and saw they were Brits. Checked on Wikipedia (using the search term “Milliard,” the British equivalent of our word “Billion”) and read that the Brits switched to our style in 1974.
Damn. I knew I was old, but not THAT old…
I care what kind of world my children will have, because of my close personal connection to them. Neither is married, but there is a chance I’ll have grandchildren. I’ll care about them almost as much as I do my own children because of the emotional attachment of my children to them. Given my age and health, it’s unlikely that I will see any grandchildren.
So I really don’t care what happens beyond about 150 years from now. And there’s not a single thing I can do about it now anyway.
I noticed they included the claim that plutonium will be safe after 500,000 years. That figure comes from the amount of time it takes the plutonium to be reduced to 1/1,000,000 of its original level … except that it will have decayed to U-235, which will be 1/30,000 as radioactive as the original plutonium. It will take 5 U-235 half lives to get to the 1/1,000,000 level.
Of course, if the plutonium is reprocessed and burned up in other reactor instead, it will become safe in much less time.
Actually, I’m looking forward to the time when all fundamental particles have decayed (many more zeros) and the substrate of the universe may have been turned into the largest computer ever, replaying history over and over and over…supposedly this does not violate the conditions of end-point, total entropy.
Or are we there already? after all, under that theory, there an indefinite amount time for the universe to recapitulate its pre-decay past in simulation than for that past to happen the first time.
Cue the Twilight Zone theme….
As Niels Bohr and Yogi Berra famously stated, “Predictions are difficult, especially about the future.”
I don’t get why no present day word will survive 1000 years when modern English is 500 years old already, and plenty of words used today must surely be far older than that?
I noticed the BBC managed to get the global warming crap in there.
Yep, the BBC managed to get global warming BS in there, but the most glaring bit is their reference to C3 photosynthisis and the end of it spelling the end of multicellular life on earth. Note that they don’t say *why* c3 photosynthesis ends (600,000,000 years). Here’s a hint; it depends on something they think is “evil” so they can’t very well mention its importance.
Hmm. Puzzled why the infographic used French/American-style instead of British-style large numbers. Checked on the creators, iibStudio, and saw they were Brits. Checked on Wikipedia (using the search term “Milliard,” the British equivalent of our word “Billion”) and read that the Brits switched to our style in 1974.
Damn. I knew I was old, but not THAT old…
I care what kind of world my children will have, because of my close personal connection to them. Neither is married, but there is a chance I’ll have grandchildren. I’ll care about them almost as much as I do my own children because of the emotional attachment of my children to them. Given my age and health, it’s unlikely that I will see any grandchildren.
So I really don’t care what happens beyond about 150 years from now. And there’s not a single thing I can do about it now anyway.
I noticed they included the claim that plutonium will be safe after 500,000 years. That figure comes from the amount of time it takes the plutonium to be reduced to 1/1,000,000 of its original level … except that it will have decayed to U-235, which will be 1/30,000 as radioactive as the original plutonium. It will take 5 U-235 half lives to get to the 1/1,000,000 level.
Of course, if the plutonium is reprocessed and burned up in other reactor instead, it will become safe in much less time.
Actually, I’m looking forward to the time when all fundamental particles have decayed (many more zeros) and the substrate of the universe may have been turned into the largest computer ever, replaying history over and over and over…supposedly this does not violate the conditions of end-point, total entropy.
Or are we there already? after all, under that theory, there an indefinite amount time for the universe to recapitulate its pre-decay past in simulation than for that past to happen the first time.
Cue the Twilight Zone theme….
As Niels Bohr and Yogi Berra famously stated, “Predictions are difficult, especially about the future.”
I don’t get why no present day word will survive 1000 years when modern English is 500 years old already, and plenty of words used today must surely be far older than that?