/sci/ - Science & Math

(Eternal) life after death is impossible due to the notion of the laws of thermodynamics and entropy in particular.

The entire universe only consists of 4*10^69 J of energy. This is EVERYTHING in the universe including forces and matter we don't even know exists yet because this is the amount of energy released by the big bang.

Over time due to the laws of thermodynamics more and more of this energy will go towards entropy. Meaning eventually all energy will "run out".

So even if there was a kind of afterlife or spirit form for humans it would eventually run out of usable energy.

Therefor certain systems like unlimited reincarnation (bhuddism, hinduism) or "Afterlife dimensions" like Heaven/Hell (Abrahamic religions) are impossible.

"Ghost" type life after death doesn't break the laws of physics since they usually have extremely weak energy not being able to interact with the world and will fade away over time so that at least doesn't break the laws of physics directly as long as you can explain away their initial energy and dissipation of that energy.

P.S. other "eternal beings" like God are also impossible due to the laws of thermodynamics.

>>11102090
Um Anon....

We DO know that the entire universe only contains 4*10^69 J in mass-energy. How do we know this? Because this was the amount of energy contained within the explosion of the big bang.

Another way to calculate this and come to the same conclusion (proof it's correct) is to take the average mass-energy per cubic meter of space in the universe and then multiply it by the volume of the observable universe. You'll come really close to this number.

In the end it doesn't matter what classification the mass has because it's all mass-energy no matter what shape it takes. Photon? Mass-energy. gravity? Mass-energy. Your mom's fat ass? Mass-energy.

It's all Mass-energy so 85% of it not being properly classified within it doesn't matter since we know its main classification and the rough estimation of its location.

>>11082174
>There is no need whatsoever to gather all resources possible or we’d do so. We don’t. We only gather what is necessary and profitable.

Except that the universe has a finite amount of matter and energy. Precisely 4*10^69 J. There will never be more than this amount of matter and energy, it's finite.

Due to entropy more and more of this gets wasted so there will be less and less of it to use over time. Stars are the major cause of this waste of energy towards entropy. So stopping stars from burning would by definition eliminate most of the entropic effects from happening in our universe. This would give an insane amount of extra existence to the species or future resources to use for whatever they choose to do with it.

This can all be gathered for the negligible cost of a SINGLE von neumann probe. And can be launched by a single individual. So there's untold trillions of years extra existence for a civilization for the cost of just 1 car size probe.

And you're assuming that every single individual in every advanced species somehow rejects that and chooses to reduce their own potential lifespan by thousands of trillions of years "just because".

I hope you start to realize by now that the chance of no one choosing to do so despite it being a rational choice is extremely low to the point of it being unrealistic.

The most obvious conclusion is us being alone so the choice can't be made by anyone else and thus stars still being visible to us.

OP you need to understand that the universe has a finite amount of mass-energy. 4*10^69 J is all the energy that exists in the universe. There will never be any more than this.

When you change 1 form of energy into another form of energy you will lose a small amount of energy that gets lost in the conversion.

It doesn't really gets lost as in "deleted" but instead it gets converted to something called "waste heat" it basically means that the energy became entropic.

To visualize what happens think of it as the energy being scattered very thinly and if you want to gather that energy to use it then the act of gathering that energy wastes more energy that the amount of energy you retrieved so you can never gain anything from trying to gather that lost entropic energy.

This happens EVERY time energy changes its shape so over time in our universe every Joule of energy will slowly become "entropic energy".

A perpetual motion machine would generate Joules but something like that isn't how our universe works at all. Instead our entire universe is just diffusion of energy into different forms towards a higher and higher rate of entropy.

Time itself is an effect of entropy always having to increase. This is why the arrow of time always moves in just one direction. Because the total entropy always has to increase.

I hope this gives a more broad answer to your question rather than just "entropy" or "2nd law of thermodynamics"

You are right OP. However there is one light at the end of the tunnel

We still see visible stars in the universe, this means one of two things.

1: There are no advanced species in the universe besides humanity because stars waste so much energy towards entropy that every species with the ability to do so would extinguish all stars. Stars still being visible means humanity will be the species that will gather all this Mass-Energy for ourselves over time
2: Advanced species do exist and them not collecting every Joule possible as evidenced by the existence of stars mean that they found out a solution to entropy after all.

Either way no matter which one is true we'll have a lot more energy than you'd expect. Sure we'll most likely still die out when we use up every Joule and everything is entropic. But at least we won't have resource wars with other intelligences over our limited supply.

Technically "perpetual motion" is possible, but not in the way you imagine it.

Newtons laws says that an object that is in motion will stay in motion until it receives energy to stop that motion.

So if you shoot out a rock into the void of space that rock will experience "perpetual motion".

What you probably mean is energy generating motion.

The real reason is that we have a limited amount of Mass-Energy that got released by the big bang which is 4*10^69 J. This is all the energy the universe will ever contain and therefor there can't be a process that adds anything to this.

How all energy "generating" processes work is that we simply change 1 type of energy into another type of energy.

However there is one little caveat. There is a form of energy called "entropic energy" which means energy that is so distributed that it can't be used anymore. Every time a form of energy changes into another form of energy a little bit gets made into entropic energy which means over time in a closed system all energy will become entropic energy and be utterly useless.

This stops perpetual motion from being possible. Unless you accept the object forever traveling in space as "perpetual motion"

>>10580358
>which probably isn't even a realistically useful means of harvesting energy, aliens would probably discover a far more efficient means of getting large amounts of energy

Entropy still applies. There's only 4*10^69 J in the entire universe. Stars burning waste away a lot of precious energy towards entropy. So an advanced species would always extinguish the stars even if they have a superior form of power generation since entropy still applies.

Stars being visible at all basically implies there isn't a species advanced enough to extinguish the stars. We have the ability to detect dyson swarms and have searched for any dyson swarm in our galaxy and the closest million galaxies and have found 0 evidence (which would be very easy to detect) of such a structure.

An advanced species not extinguishing all stars is the same as robbing itself out of millions of years of existence every day. Thus stars being visible is direct and definite proof of there being no advanced species in the universe EVEN if they have a better energy generation method than dyson swarms.

>>10523610
We literally know how much mass-energy the universe contains. It's 4*10^69 joules.

>Perhaps our model cannot account for the existence of the soul as of yet and perhaps we are simply not capable of detecting it.

"Something" always has to interact with the physical world around it if it contains energy or matter. If it doesn't contain energy or matter then it doesn't exist. Us not being able to detect it means it has too little energy or matter for it to be visible to our sensors or that it just straight up doesn't exist.

Either way souls don't exist because they break the conservation of energy unless you are saying that souls have an expiration date but if you say souls are immortal and will exist forever then it invariably breaks the laws of thermodynamics and reverses entropy.