Technically change isn’t a constant. Eventually everything will stop changing, because all of the atoms will have drifted too far apart to react to each other, and the universe will just be a thin soup of everything that will never touch anything ever again. Tomorrow is Wednesday, though, so only a few more days until the weekend!
I don’t think it’s been ruled out for certain, but I believe the data is looking incredibly bad for big crunch enthusiasts, since the discovery of dark energy.
Edit: from the Big Crunch Wikipedia page:
The vast majority of evidence indicates that this hypothesis is not correct. Instead, astronomical observations show that the expansion of the universe is accelerating rather than being slowed by gravity, suggesting that a Big Chill is more likely. However, some physicists have proposed that a “Big Crunch-style” event could result from a dark energy fluctuation.
I take issue with discovery. To say there’s a mysterious inexplicable expansion of the universe hardly qualifies as such. It sounds more like a failure to understand our physical laws than to posit the presence of mysterious and otherwise undetectable entity.
The use of the word “discovery” in this case was carefully considered. The discovery of “dark energy” refers to the effect: the unexpected acceleration of the expansion of space. The fact that the expansion is accelerating was a discovery, and dark energy is just the name given to “whatever causes that”.
But by that point, cognition itself will be a physical impossibility, so is the the lack of change even real if there’s nothing to conceptualize its truth, and thus capable of declaring: “Nothing will ever change anymore”?
Technically change isn’t a constant. Eventually everything will stop changing, because all of the atoms will have drifted too far apart to react to each other, and the universe will just be a thin soup of everything that will never touch anything ever again. Tomorrow is Wednesday, though, so only a few more days until the weekend!
We don’t know that for fact, we can’t even agree on the age of the universe. Maybe there’s a big crunch
I don’t think it’s been ruled out for certain, but I believe the data is looking incredibly bad for big crunch enthusiasts, since the discovery of dark energy.
Edit: from the Big Crunch Wikipedia page:
Dark energy is a bit of a meme, have the inconsistencies with jws and hubble been resolved yet?
I take issue with discovery. To say there’s a mysterious inexplicable expansion of the universe hardly qualifies as such. It sounds more like a failure to understand our physical laws than to posit the presence of mysterious and otherwise undetectable entity.
The use of the word “discovery” in this case was carefully considered. The discovery of “dark energy” refers to the effect: the unexpected acceleration of the expansion of space. The fact that the expansion is accelerating was a discovery, and dark energy is just the name given to “whatever causes that”.
If the atoms continue drifting, then that in itself is still change.
Yeah, that really drives home the point that the only rule is that everything is temporary.
But by that point, cognition itself will be a physical impossibility, so is the the lack of change even real if there’s nothing to conceptualize its truth, and thus capable of declaring: “Nothing will ever change anymore”?
You are mixing philosophy and fact. It doesn’t matter what can or can’t be perceived. If you blindfold yourself, the world doesn’t go away.