So they say someday the universe will expand until it's completely cold and dark.

[Kablooie]

It certainly won't be able to support life then.

So even if we do everything right to remain viable, at some point the human race will end.

Some people in the future will experience the total death of humanity for real.
What will that be like to know that everything that man has striven for over the eons will soon be absolutely and irretrievably lost forever?

And one poor lone person will be the actual and true last living person in the universe someday.
He will know but no one else will.
Ever.
There won't be anyone left in the universe for him to tell.

It sounds like science fiction but it's not.
It is an inevitable part of reality.

Just some useless musings on a Monday evening.

And now here's Hoagy Carmichael playing "In the Cool Cool Cool of the Evening."

[abq e streeter]

1. And will happen when the Cubs are one out away from winning the World Series

for the first time in 4 billion years.

[RandomThoughts]

2. There are a few delusions in that.

The 'last person on the planet' is built from a few places, and is in many places.


What it really is is 'alone in the crowd' where some limitations in empathy or feeling makes it seem like the people around you do not exist.

Lots of delusions can get there, it is a main goal of those that want to hurt people, trying to get someone to think they are alone.

The fact that many stories talk about last person on earth, shows others ran into that same delusion, and if you run into a delusion that other people did, then you can not be alone.

There are few variations of that delusion.

That delusion did not work on me, so they took money and economics to keep me from being around people to try to get me to believe that delusion by limited interactions. Another reason it is not true, since once I overcame the internal filters that thought they could convince me that was true, they had to move to isolate to try and create that feeling.

:shrug:

Someone is going to send me beer and travel money so I can be around people again.

[Kablooie]

3. I know there have been many stories built around this premise...

but I was just thinking that it isn't just a story or a delusion.
It's probably so far in the future that it has no real bearing on us today but it is something that will inevitably become an actual fact at some point in the future.
Of course there won't be anyone alive to register the fact that it's a fact.

[Xithras]

4. By most estimates, that's about 10^100 years in the future.

Trillions and trillions and trillions of years. Plenty of time to figure out a way to poke a hole through the dimensions and step through to the other side.

[Kablooie]

5. Ah yes. There is that possibility. Discovering loopholes in fabric of the universe..

But after so many trillions of years the cemeteries will be pretty crowded I'd bet.
Cremated remains would probably be the dominant resource on earth.
Everyone would be wading through layers of dead folk.

Maybe they would be relieved to know it was all coming to an end.

[bluedigger]

6. Unlikely.

The odds of our species surviving until the universe decays is infinitesimal. As noted, the timescale is pretty much incomprehensible. (Our planet is what, 4 billion years old?)

If anyone is around to witness it, they would be a god, I think, at least as we imagine the concept.

Then again, even gods must die.

[stuntcat]

13. "even gods must die."

:)

[jobycom]

7. You make it sound like the end of the universe will be like Minnesota!

You know who that last man will be? Brett Favre. And he still won't be able to decide whether he's retired or not.

[Orrex]

8. What is that your business?

Brooklyn is not expanding.

[PassingFair]

9. "What's the point?"

[hobbit709]

10. the earth will be gone long before the end of the universe.

When the sun expands, earth will become a little cinder.

[deutsey]

11. From what I understand of Hindu Vedanta

the universe is continually expanding and contracting over the eons. Once it expands to a certain point it contracts over billions of years back to its origin and then re-expands. Rinse. Repeat.

Not saying that's what's really happening, but it's as viable as the more linear dead-end theory you posit.

[stuntcat]

12. we shouldn't throw our hands up though!

We can make the world a beautiful place in the meantime :) we can make being humans sustainable somehow and help the critters and trees keep existing too! That's the good part.

[av8rdave]

14. I've seen it happen on a small scale