Episode 81, 'The End of Everything: Astrophysically Speaking' with Katie Mack (Part II - Further Analysis and Discussion)
The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast
Jack Symes | Andrew Horton, Oliver Marley, and Rose de Castellane
4.8 • 612 Ratings
🗓️ 28 June 2020
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Approximately 13.8 billion years ago, an infinitely dense state of an infinitely large universe lay dormant upon the backdrop of existence. Then, the expansion of everything. The potential for trillions of galaxies sprung out from this same point, and today, they shine like fairy lights in the darkness of the vast cosmos. From our own little planet, bursting with life, art, culture, and science, we can observe the effects of the big bang and the universes' continuing expansion. We can see the beginning, but we can also see the end. In about five billion years, the sun will swell to around 250 times its current size, leaving our once blue and white planet a lifeless, magma-covered rock. That's settled, the apocalypse is coming: the land will fry and the seas will boil - but there is more at stake than the Earth. What matters now is the bigger question: how will the universe end?
In this episode, we'll be discussing the impending doom of the cosmos with theoretical astrophysicist Katherine Mack. Katie is Assistant Professor of Physics at North Carolina State University. As well as making huge contributions to the field of astrophysics, Katie is one of the most active public-facing scientists in the world today. From publications in Slate, Scientific America, and Time Magazine, to featuring on the BBC and being quoted in the song lyrics of Hozier, Katie's work is expanding into the furthest corners of our planet. Grab the cosmic popcorn, it's a question as old as time itself: how will the universe end?
Contents
Part I. The Death of the Universe
Part II. Further Analysis and Discussion
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Pan, pan, psychist. |
| 0:04.3 | Part two, further analysis and discussion. |
| 0:22.0 | So in this section, Katie, we're going to just ask some more informal questions and push kind of your philosophical intuitions and your analysis of these different ways in which the universe might end. |
| 0:32.7 | So I guess the most pressing question I'll ask is, first, which one is the most likely of these scenarios |
| 0:38.5 | to play out? |
| 0:39.5 | And which one would you personally prefer to be true? |
| 0:43.5 | So the most likely is certainly the heat death based on what we understand. |
| 0:48.8 | One could say vacuum decay because our data currently point toward the direction of, you know, |
| 0:57.7 | meta stability for the Higgs field and all of this. But we also are pretty sure we don't trust |
| 1:02.7 | those calculations to the extent that we would need to to say that for sure this was going to happen. |
| 1:08.1 | So I think that the heat death is, is the most likely one. |
| 1:11.6 | In terms of what I would prefer to happen, I mean, that's, that's tricky, right? I mean, |
| 1:16.7 | none of these end well, right? It's not, they're not a happy story. I think the vacuum decay is a |
| 1:22.2 | really fun idea. I think that it, it has interesting implications for the sort of makeup of the cosmos as a whole. And I |
| 1:31.5 | like the idea of vacuum decay just because it seems like a very clean, you know, wrap-up of |
| 1:37.2 | everything. And I think that sounds really neat. But I don't know, it's fun to work on as a physicist. It's fun to think about, but in terms of |
| 1:47.3 | what I want to wish that on the cosmos, I'm not sure. Well, I wonder which ones allow for, like, |
| 1:52.5 | life to exist in the future. And we're going to ask some listener questions towards the end of |
| 1:56.1 | this section, but one which links in nice to hear is from someone called Warren WP-Truple-7 on Twitter, |
| 2:01.4 | who asks, |
| 2:02.2 | after all gas and energy burns out and the cold dead planets roll through the void, |
| 2:06.7 | do you think it will eventually drift back together for another big crunch and kick it off again? |
... |
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