Science desk
< March 18	<< Feb \| March \| Apr >>	March 20 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Science Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

March 19[edit]

Is it true age of universe and age of any person are same?[edit]

I saw a fb post about second law of thermodynamics saying age of humans and age of any person are same. I find it weird. How much truth in it? Rizosome (talk) 03:54, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In the most obvious sense the answer is no. Well the age of the hydrogen, protons and many of the neutrons in a person would be close to the age of the universe, as they were created within minutes of the creation singularity. Heavier atoms would be formed more recently, perhaps a third to one quarter the age of the universe. You may also be able to find a reference frame in which the universe is less than 100 years old, eg as in the cosmic background neutrinos. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:33, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Living beings are more than just their physical elements. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:48, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't believe any of the nonsense you see posted on Facebook.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:16, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The laws of thermodynamics do not address the age of anything. They deal with relations between heat and work. --Lambiam 11:51, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure what the Second law has to do with this, but it seems to me rather obvious that the age of everyone/everything is the same, because if you go back far enough into your own past you are necessary considering a version of you that will have a smaller memory content. So, as you go back to the beginning you would end up erasing all of the in formation that defines you. Two different persons are going to be mapped to the same entity under this operation. So, the correct point of view is that when you grow up and become aware of the World, every new experience ends up defining in which sector of the multiverse you end up in. Before you knew that you live in a house and not in a cave, you had an identical copy in the multiverse that lives in a prehistoric ice-age society. Before you had seen a car, you had a copy that lives in a World where cars don't exists (yet). When you only had very rudimentary feelings you could not feel the difference between being in your mother's womb or in an egg. So, very far back in your own history, you've split off from a copies that could have become dinosaurs, some of them would have lived right here on Earth. Count Iblis (talk) 18:29, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The age of the atoms that comprise your body is not the same thing as the age of you. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:45, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pretty sure everything you just said needs a healthy dose of WP:RS. —moonythedwarf (Braden N.) 19:04, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In the everyday sense of the words, in which a person's age dates to the person's birth, the claim is obviously false. It seems that any other interpretation would have to rest on deciding what the "person" is, which is not really a question within the purview of science.

If you are interested in philosophical or spiritual inquiries into such questions, you might check out personal identity and pre-existence. But they don't have any obvious connection with the second law. --Trovatore (talk) 22:24, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]