Let's see. The universe is still slowly expanding from the last big bang. At some point in a few billion years it all collapses upon itself... then another big bang and the cycle is repeated.

So in about 7 billion years we will all be here again on RfM. Rinse and repeat. Expand, contract. Expand, contract.

Nothing happens after death. Also, it doesnt look like there will be a big crunch. The universe is expanding at an accelerating speed. It will most likely just keep getting colder and darker forever.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/14/2011 11:33PM by Simone Stigmata.

but to the germs living there, it seems like the Universe everywhere is expanding.

The approximate answer to your question about what happens after we die is this:

http://youtu.be/sdqRzmXQE78

http://youtu.be/YMFT41EAHpQ

http://youtu.be/ARjtHrqbqu4

http://youtu.be/MyoQoM7d6vI

http://youtu.be/kTgVx57asIw

My name is Steve. I'm an atheist. We survive death.

Real cheap, given the economy and all!

I weep for those who form opinions via YouTube.

Timothy

"Jay, I swear it feels like somthing keeps grabbing my ass!"

"You're imagining things bro. You've said that for the last ten investigations. What does it do, follow you around?"

I'm afraid dark energy is going to keep the universe from collapsing back in on itself. Unfortunately, it seems that the most likely demise of the universe according to our current knowledge is a great freeze, as the universe gets ever larger, colder, and emptier. Too bad, it'd be funner to go out with a bang.

kimball Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm afraid dark energy is going to keep the
> universe from collapsing back in on itself.
> Unfortunately, it seems that the most likely
> demise of the universe according to our current
> knowledge is a great freeze, as the universe gets
> ever larger, colder, and emptier. Too bad, it'd
> be funner to go out with a bang.


Higgledy Piggledy
Increasing entropy
Unidirectional
Heat flow implies

Eschatological
Thermodynamical
Petering out when the
Universe dies.

As for the demise of the universe, as stated above, it just keeps expanding until it's all dark and cold. Nothing will survive anywhere in the universe. But long before that happens the stars will start to go out. Let's assume there could be people still living on earth. The galaxies will be racing away from us so fast and so far that it will take too long for their light to get back to us. One by one it will appear that their light goes out. Those surviving earthlings will look up into a totally black sky with nary a star in sight.

As for the death of those earthlings, dead brain = dead mind = dead consciousness = cease to exist. It's as simple as that.

IMHO, cosmology is one of the most, perhaps the most unsettled branch of science. It's been just a couple of decades that we have decided that the evidence shows that the universal expansion is accelerating, and that what we used to think of as the universe (observable matter) is only about 5% of the universe, which also contains almost unimaginable amounts of dark matter and dark energy.

Meanwhile the string theory types are postulating ten dimensions or some such in the universe. What if they are right, and we learn how to access those extra dimensions? That would change our cosmology so far from what it is right now, that we literally can hardly imagine what it would be like.

My point: take claims of a forever expanding universe that will suffer a cold expansion-death with a very large grain of salt. We don't know what we don't know.

what's on the other side of the edges of the expansion?

I'm sure our smart scientist guys on this planet here have figured it all out. They've got computers and they know math and stuff.

Grknok Fizz of the "other universe. He writes: "Please stop expanding. You are making us contract and we don't like it."

Well, I guess that answers that. But what's on the other side of Grknok Fizz's universe?

Some have theorized that the space-time in our universe curves back on itself - that if you travel far enough you come back to where you started. However, using ultra-sensitive measurements from the voyager probes, the curvature of space has come out flat to many orders of magnitude. So if the universe is curved, it's not curved enough for us to detect it.

I have my own theory, and acknowledge that it's my own person crack-pot thing, but it seems to fit in my mind, that space-time isn't as hollow as we think. It doesn't comprise matter as we know it, but it is made up of substance. Matter as we know it displaces that substance, causing distortion of space-time, and ultimately gravity. We're essentially held to the surface of the earth by the compression of that displacement.

And that pressure is forcing space-time outward, causing the universe to expand. So in my crack-pot theory, the expansion of the universe is caused by matter (as we know it). And space-time expanding faster on the edges because space-time is less dense there. And it's accelerating as a result of the pressure, constantly forcing it to go faster and faster on the outsides, as it races out into the void beyond.

My theory would support the theory of the "great rip" as the end of the universe, as space-time flies apart so fast and becomes so thin that even matter can no longer hold together and breaks apart.

But on the bright side, if our universe was created once, there's likely an infinite number of universes just like it. But you have to remember that the location of these universes is ambiguous according to my understanding, since they're separated by a void that doesn't constitute space or time.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/18/2011 01:22PM by kimball.

Along with what a lot of folks said, I'd say that I'll be wherever I was in 1945, before I was born.

It's the same as making money by writing faked and insulting obituaries.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/15/2011 10:47AM by Cheryl.

It didn't bother me one bit.

what happens after death? Life goes on without me, that's what. The brain, which is just cells, they die just like a computer hard drive would if it was made of fleshy organic material (overtime a hard drive will also evaporate, and they don't work to well w/o electricity either, just like us if you think about it).

That's my best guess based on what the current evidence would suggest, but if someone can prove otherwise I'm willing to keep an open mind.

Thanks the the discovery of microwave background radiation, the theory that we live in a FLAT universe is supported. Therefore, the universe is most likely to continue to expand indefinatlety. No "big crunch". Sorry... The end is just that... The end.

HH

If you would like to see a lovely lecture via YouTube just search for "big bang something from nothing and Lawrence krauss."

Before then it is pure speculation.

Nobody knows although we all have opinions.

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/16/2011 08:39PM by steve benson.

Every new discovery we make regarding brain function points to a chemical causality. The trend is definitely toward a life-dependent consciousness. As Steve says: "Once your brain dies, it's permanent unconsciousness." I agree, but then, who doesn't like to sleep? We'll be fine.

...so I prefer to make up fairy tales about what will happen to me after I die, and those fairy tales will keep me warm at night.

I'll ignore all the evidence to the contrary. I'll use loaded words like "faith" and "hope" when talking about my make-beliefs.

I'll only talk to people that make-believe in the same fairy tales as me, and I'll pay someone to repeat those beliefs to me at least one day every week.

I'll place stock in a book written by people with no scientific understanding of the universe, but I'll ignore the parts that I don't like.

Please, Steve, pleeeeaaaaasseeeeee, I beg you, stop throwing logic and reason at me. I need to believe in an afterlife. I'm too important to die. I'm too important!!!!!!!

(sticks fingers in each ear and begins to hum "god is an awesome god")

Brings to mind a rhetorical question I've heard:

"If the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into?"

Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, one of my favorite writers says the human race seems to be intent upon its own extinction. And even if we weren't polluting our oceans and causing climate warming, evolution and Darwinian selection moves a long. One of the comments he makes in his book, Our Final Hour, states...

Most educated people are aware that we're the outcome of nearly 4 billion years of Darwinian selection, but many tend to think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans who watch the sun's demise, 6 billion years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae."

I don't know!

I'm pretty sure I've had past lives. I really love life, even though my current one sux a great deal of the time. But I never feel down for some reason.

I think my life previous to this one was crazy fun and I'm still in that mode. I'm pretty sure I was on a ship back in the 1700s...as a mariner or pirate. It was a hard life, but every day was an adventure. Those were the days!...