forever is a long time
Title: borrowed from a chapter in Paul Davies’ book The Last Three Minutes. The book deals with scenarios for the ultimate fate of the universe. It was published in 1994 before the discovery of the accelerated expansion of the universe. With that, the scenario of an ever-expanding universe was considered to be not very likely, which has changed in the second half of the 90s. In an ever-expanding universe, pretty much everything will decay. Diamond will decay. Stars will decay. Galaxies will decay. Black holes will evaporate because of Hawking radiation, even if it takes 1E66 years for a black hole of one solar mass. And there is more: it might be that the proton is not stable. Different mechanisms were proposed, suggesting proton life times of 1E45 … 1E220 years (current detection limit is ~1E32, I think, no proton decay was observed so far to my knowledge). If such theories are true, all protons will decay because: forever is a long time. The proton may decay into a pion (which then will decay into 2 photons or a positron-electron pair) and a positron. So, at the end (whatever “end” means in that context), there will be a vast space with some left-over positrons and electrons (because not all of them may annihilate) and some photons.
Think about. Or better: do not think about.
Nikkor 10-20mm f/3.5. Not so bad, given the fact that it only has f/3.5. Some sharpening and noise reduction in photoshop. Reduced the red channel a bit because such pictures usually come out a bit reddish-brown which I don’t like.
forever is a long time
Title: borrowed from a chapter in Paul Davies’ book The Last Three Minutes. The book deals with scenarios for the ultimate fate of the universe. It was published in 1994 before the discovery of the accelerated expansion of the universe. With that, the scenario of an ever-expanding universe was considered to be not very likely, which has changed in the second half of the 90s. In an ever-expanding universe, pretty much everything will decay. Diamond will decay. Stars will decay. Galaxies will decay. Black holes will evaporate because of Hawking radiation, even if it takes 1E66 years for a black hole of one solar mass. And there is more: it might be that the proton is not stable. Different mechanisms were proposed, suggesting proton life times of 1E45 … 1E220 years (current detection limit is ~1E32, I think, no proton decay was observed so far to my knowledge). If such theories are true, all protons will decay because: forever is a long time. The proton may decay into a pion (which then will decay into 2 photons or a positron-electron pair) and a positron. So, at the end (whatever “end” means in that context), there will be a vast space with some left-over positrons and electrons (because not all of them may annihilate) and some photons.
Think about. Or better: do not think about.
Nikkor 10-20mm f/3.5. Not so bad, given the fact that it only has f/3.5. Some sharpening and noise reduction in photoshop. Reduced the red channel a bit because such pictures usually come out a bit reddish-brown which I don’t like.