Talk:Timeline of the far future

Congratulations

Just a note of congratulations to the editors who put this article together. In Elmo Keep's All Dressed Up For Mars and Nowhere to Go, she describes the effect this article had on her: "By the time I got through to the end I suffered a panic attack of such intensity the walls of the room appeared distended in my vision, and I momentarily lost the ability to hear. Then I lay on the floor of my office and cried for a very long time." Can there be higher praise? -- ToE 03:06, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you :) It does seem to have an effect on people, though I've noticed that effect has lessened since I introduced the new format. I think the narrative kinda lost its potency. Serendi^podous 09:55, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Do you mean the reformatting from a bulleted list to the current table? -- ToE 19:51, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

No, I mean when I broke up the "Future of the Earth, the Solar System and the Universe" section into separate lists. Was a good idea (the list was getting too long) but it seems to have killed off a lot of interest. The fact that the BBC made a barely credited infographic out of it hasn't helped either. Still, it remains as popular as it always has been, if the viewing stats are anything to go by. It's just not as oft-mentioned as it used to be. Serendi^podous 00:14, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I put it back. I really think it's OK, and I think readers prefer it that way. Serendi^podous 18:01, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Evolutionary biology

In the first paragraph it is stated that evolutionary biology predicts how lifeforms will evolve over time. Is this true? Are there any peer-reviewed statements about the future evolution of life agreed upon by the scientific community in the same way, say, the future of the sun is agreed? We all know evolutionary biology explains how life on earth has evolved and which factors affect its evolution but, does it have long-term predictive value concerning the outcomes? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.234.105.160 (talk) 18:07, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

It is true, but in a rather more limited way. Specifically, evolutionary biology can roughly predict how the level of biodiversity will change over time, given certain changes in population size or degree of isolation, e.g. allopatric speciation. It cannot, though, predict the shape that such changes in biodiversity may take in the future.--Pharos (talk) 19:08, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Calculation of Time Until Next Big Bang

The table cites the time until the next big bang as 10^560 years, with a citation. But the cited paper calculates the probability of spontaneous, not annual, quantum fluctuations leading to a Big Bang as 10^-5600. Could someone explain the math behind this? How does a probability of 10^-5600 per instant translate into an expected time (until first occurrence) of 10^560 years? In other articles on this topic, I've read statements like "We don't know when the next Big Bang will be, but we know it won't be in the next 10 billion years. 10^560 years is obviously much greater than 10 billion. But where does this number come from? 70.174.128.14 (talk) 03:58, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers from. The number in the article and cited in the citation isn't 10^560 or 10^5600. It's 10^10^56, which is a number so large that it doesn't really matter what it's measured in, instants, years, whatever. Serendi^podous 07:37, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

When you raise a power to a power, you multiply the exponents. So 10^10^56=10^560. This is the number in the article, with a citation to the paper. The units are years. By contrast, the number in the paper (equation 45) is 10^(-10)^10^56, which is 10^-5600. This is a probability. I'm simply asking for the math, if any, that was used to convert this probability into an expected number of years. When we are dealing with time scales on this magnitude, the difference between these numbers is certainly important. Because the table lists events of the far future in chronological order, it also affects the placement of this particular row. For example, if the first number is interpreted as an annual, rather than instantaneous probability, then this row would move to the bottom. For that matter, the issue is also relevant to the critical question of whether a new universe is expected to be "born" before the current one "dies," because, according to the table, the universe reaches its final end state in more than 10^560, but fewer than 10^5600, years.

Actually, let me amend that. I thought about it some more. I was thinking in terms of (10^10)^56, which is 10^560. But the number cited here is 10(10^56), which is much larger. I get that. Thank you for clarifying. But the basic issue still remains. Even if we assume that instants = years, I'd still like to understand the math of how we got from the probability in the paper to the value in the table. How does a probability of 10^(-10)^10^56 translate to a time of 10^10^56? 70.174.128.14 (talk) 04:07, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

That number is the probability of it happening at any one time, which, when inverted, becomes the time by which it will probably have happened. Serendi^podous 13:13, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Agree. But these numbers do not appear to be reciprocals. If you have math showing that they are, feel free to post. But wouldn't the reciprocal of 10^(10^56) be 10^(-1)^(10^56), not 10^(-10)^10^56? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.174.128.14 (talk) 04:30, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Actually I think you're right; the reciprocal of the number in the paper is much bigger than that. Serendi^podous 07:57, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Can you update it, and change the order of the item in the table accordingly? Ignoring the difference between instants and years, I calculated the reciprocal. It's approximately 1.71 * 10^((10^(10^56))-51). Note the extra "10," which also should change the placement of the row in the table. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.223.21.100 (talk) 16:33, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

I already did. Serendi^podous 16:59, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I corrected a typo above. The expression above is correct and is expressed in years, rather than instants. The influence of this is the "-51" in the exponent.

Lead sentence

Serendipodous, I think you made a mistake in reversing part of my recent edit to the lead. While predictions of the future can never be absolutely certain?? Really? Predictions are always speculative, as I had said. I hope you're not suggesting that science makes predictions, or that that is what the source says. As I tried to make clear in that sentence, science makes projections, not predictions, extrapolations from the present under the assumption of the continuation of processes from conditions that are known in the present. It's always "assuming present conditions", then we can anticipate "that". If / then. It's always speculative as to whether or not the "if" will happen. If it does, though, "then" follows (as long as we really understand the processes we think we do - and we've become pretty good at that). I think this article needs to make it crystal clear that science doesn't just pull stuff out of thin air, but always works from known foundations. Evensteven (talk) 18:10, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Last I checked, the very definition of a scientific hypothisis is the ability to make predictions. This is not the time or the place to raise contentious issues on the philosophy of science. Serendi^podous 17:59, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Well, you may have a point, if you consider astrology to be a science. But I'll get out of your way if you want to change it back. This is the time and place to make corrections, after all. By my philosophy, anyway. Evensteven (talk) 21:10, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

You appear not to know the difference between a scientific predictive hypothesis (eg: a light ball and a heavy ball will fall at the same speed) and divination. Please understand the meaning of scientific prediction before editing scientific articles. Serendi^podous 11:44, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Well, you're mistaken; I do know the difference. I think we've been having a clash over what the word "prediction" itself means, or at least in how it can be interpreted. The primary use of the word is for declarations that "X will happen", guaranteed. What I have been trying to get at is that a scientific "prediction" (if you must call it that, I suppose it is used that way sometimes), differs from that. You stated my point perfectly in your edit summary, saying scientific predictions are not the same thing as divination. Now, my reason for my prior edit is that while I understand the difference, and you do, not all the article's readers do. I think there are better words to use in the article to convey what science really does, and I wanted that to be "crystal clear". Science can, of course, use "prediction" when scientists are talking to each other, because no one will misunderstand. But it would be better to use a different word to tell non-scientists what science does. That was the purpose of my edit. I happened to use "projection" because that word was already present there and it seemed suitable. "Forecast" also seems reasonable to me, as in most peoples' minds it would conjure images of weather forecasts, known to be accurate often enough, but also subject to unpredictable effects. So once again, you may do to the article what seems reasonable to you (including leaving it as is). You might want to consider, however, that an edit does not always have the intention behind it as it may appear to you at first sight. We all are affected in this way by our ordinary patterns of thought, and our immediate lines of thought, and can be misled. It's happened to me often enough, so I work at looking twice. And even then I don't always get it right away. So no hard feelings here; none, I hope, at your end. Evensteven (talk) 17:00, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

230 million years in the future

It is an error to say that in 230 million years more you will not be able to predict planet´s orbit. The Lyapunov time is a moving time, it means that you cannot predict an orbit for a lpse of time longer than Lyapunov's time.