this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2025
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[–] humorlessrepost@lemmy.world 29 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The black holes evaporate eventually.

After that, depends on who you ask. Most physicists would say something like “as close to nothing as possible”. Penrose would say at a certain point when nothing can interact with anything else, distance loses meaning, which makes the universe and a singularity equivalent, so then things restart.

[–] dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Not sure about the "restart" bit.

[–] humorlessrepost@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

If it’s mathematically equivalent to the starting conditions of our universe, why would it behave differently?

[–] dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

I don't think you can argue that it's mathematically equivalent. Just because space and time become so spread that they are effectively meaningless is not the same as them having not meaningfully existed and then existing. Neither can you really say that since any baryons that have not decayed are so far apart none of them interact that they behave like the concentration of all matter in the known universe. At those scales of time I'm not even sure that there are any left.

It's like arguing that one tiny piece of something in one place is the same as all the matter and all of space and time being in one place: it's I guess analogous but not equivalent. I will of course caveat and say that my undergrad physics degree did not cover end of the universe timelines lol. Kurzgesagt does have a video though.

The cyclical universe approach as I understand it is predicated on an eventual big crunch which I don't think is being argued anymore.

[–] humorlessrepost@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he’s right. I just thought the objection was to the “restart bit”, and I thought that part reasonably followed if the earlier parts were accepted.

But Penrose’s Conformal Cyclic Cosmology is pretty much the opposite of a Big Crunch.

[–] dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

I guess I'll have to read up. I have potentially had a long running misunderstanding.

[–] Blemish5236@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC2JOQ7z5L0

The cyclical universe approach as I understand it is predicated on an eventual big crunch which I don't think is being argued anymore.

The universe is definitely cyclical, the only real question is: how?

There's lots of theories: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoCYY9sa2kU

Unless it's been disproven it's not "not being argued anymore"

[–] Karjalan@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Because things haven't progressed linearly with the universes evolution, and, as the op stipulates, we are part of one second vs countless billions of years (relatively) till it's theoretical demise, it is possible/probable that we don't know what will happen down the line.

Certain things might change to make it possible that we simply can't predict due to lack of information (the future) and technological difficulties.

[–] Eagle0110@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Yeah I also think it would take a lot more than just one single bit of discrete information in an universe of completely uniform and homogeneous nothingness, to restart the universe lol /s