Countdown to oblivion: Why time itself could end

[Swede]

"We could run into the end of time," Ben Freivogel tells a seminar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Several colleagues seem nonplussed, and one Nobel laureate looks downright exasperated. "I'm aware that this sounds like a crazy conclusion," Freivogel admits, generating a round of what sounds like relieved laughter. But perhaps their relief is short-lived.

The nature of time, our perception of it and even whether it exists at all are hot topics for both physicists and philosophers. But Freivogel isn't pushing a strange new concept of time.

His idea is arguably even more baffling. He thinks that time, as described by Einstein's theory of general relativity, could simply end in our universe, taking us with it. He gives us another 5 billion years or so before the axe falls

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19513-countdown-to-oblivion-why-time-itself-could-end.html?full=true

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. phew! I don't have to ask State Farm

for insurance?

On a serious note, famously, a woman in her seventies asked that question from Carl Sagan at a popular lecture... whether she had to buy insurance against the end of the Earth.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. Time exists so that everything doesn't happen at once.

If there's no more time, everything would happen at once and that would pretty much suck. Space exists so that everything doesn't happen to you, but if there's no more time, space wouldn't matter anyhow.

[bluestateguy]

3. Isn't the sun going to blow up into a big red giant by then anyway?

Making Earth inhabitable anyway?

I guess if we all take our belongings to Pluto we might be able to rebuild.

[Uben]

4. I was gonna save some time tonight..........

.....and sell it at a later date.

[Jim__]

5. "... the chance of waking up in 1 minute or 1 billion years is 50:50."

Maybe I just don't understand their example. But, it seems to me the chance of waking up in 1 billion years is 0, no matter what the coin says.

[trotsky]

6. Of all the ways the universe could end,

this actually sounds like the most appealing. No worrying, no fretting, no heat death, no implosion, just one second everything is here and the next everything is gone.

[silverweb]

7. Great new fodder for sci-fi writers!

:woohoo:

[LaurenG]

8. I do wonder what that would be like

Would life as a child, adolescent, adult and senior citizen all happen at once? So we could all change our own diapers, counsel ourselves before we make mistakes and make sure we took advantage of the economic booms?

Fun to think about but I have no conception of what no time would really mean.

[GreenPartyVoter]

11. Imagine giving birth when that happens. *shudders*

[stickiteh]

9. Countdown to oblivion

Isn't one of the theories about the Mayan calendar ending on 12/21/2012 that it isn't the world ceases to exist on that date, but time AS WE CURRENTLY UNDERSTAND IT ceases to exist?

[Iggo]

10. Time: It;s just one thing after another.

So I guess when we get to the last thing, that's it.

[RagAss]

12. Time is motion in the fourth dimension.

Did I mention my watch is broken.