/sci/ - Science & Math

I'd say heat death as well.
Also:
If never find a way to travel faster than light, interstellar travel will never be commercially viable.
We may be confined to Earth and maybe Mars forever.

The expansion of the universe is accelerating. Eventually every galaxy will be receding away from us faster than the speed of light. Civilizations that develop after this point will never know how big the universe is. They won't know there is more than one galaxy.

>>6002796
>The expansion of the universe is accelerating.
Luckily that is still conjecture. That'd scare me too.

>>6002802
no, its measured.

>>6002816
Really OP, you should have said no astronomy.

>>6002819
OP here. For some reason feeling insignificant doesn't scare me much. Considering I'm one out of seven billion, I'm already insignificant, aren't I?

This is even scarier than flashy unrealistic pictures about the visible black hole 'eating' a star.

Also the sun is going to engulf the whole Earth. Couldn't find a good picture of that.

>>6002821
Counterclaim we are extremely rare, existence is significant regardless of what or who you are...

>>6002824
Existence with memory, emotion, thoughts and complicated lives well... Thats something even more rare.

>>6002792
>Heat death of the universe scares me.

Why?? There is literally no way this would EVER affect you.

>What in science scares you?

The loss of critical peer review as it's slowly replaced with journalistic sensationalism, monetized propoganda, and political influence on scientific work/findings.

7 billion people with near identical genetics, very similar upbringings, but I'm a unique snowflake, right?

I sometimes get depressed when I see yet another odd habit that I thought was uniquely mine, like running up stairs on all fours, be shared by thousands of people on some reddit thread, representing probably tens of millions in the population as a whole.

That we will most likely never be able to contact any other intelligent life

>>6002830
but you genome IS unique. There's gotta be something.

>inb4 no sir you see I'm a twin

>>6002830
If I have the hiccups, I can just stop having them if I want. Only if I'm not chewing something though.

>>6002832
>That we will most likely never be able to contact any other intelligent life

The prospect of successfully contacting intelligent life is way scarier than the alternative.

black holes are a pretty scary concept for me

>>6002848
Every fucking space documentary show really plays up how scary and dangerous they are. I feel bad for them, their not bad guys, they're just doing what black holes do.

>>6002792
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/12/12/physicists-universe-simulation-test-university-of-washington-matrix_n_2282745.html

This..just read it and it scared the shit out off me. Would explain the whole religious notion of life after death, at least this death. Does that mean we "wake" up. I'm so terrified now.

>>6002822
>>6002848
This.

Black holes scare the almighty fuck out of me. I get shivers and cold sweats traveling towards them in universe simulators.

Why does something that, if it happened, would happen in such a large amount of time that it's even a pain to write in scientific notation scare you? While still illogical, it is more logical to be afraid of the luminosity of the sun increasing to the point that the earth will no longer be able to support life in about a billion years or so. Considering it took 4 billion years to go from nothing to a bunch of idiots posting on an image board, 1 billion years doesn't seem like a long enough amount of time to work out how to deal with the sun thing.

>>6002859
Imagine that, being a Sim in some alien program.

>>6002859
i hope it's a simulation, would be extremely interesting

>>6002819
please step into the total-perspective-vortex

>>6002874
>1 billion years is not enough to solve the dying sun problem
nah

>>6002940
>a simulation of something is interesting
>something itself apparently not
you would live forever knowing that there is a superior realm of reality you will never access

>>6002874
We, or something we could become, could escape the Sun getting hotter. We could even survive it's death, either huddling round its dying warmth or setting out to new stars. But once every last bit of hydrogen has been fused, once the last stellar husks cool down to background, what will happen to whatever intelligence we may have become? As they spend the eons clinging to life, seeking out smaller and smaller variations in temperature to suck the energy out of, what will happen?

That kind of scares me, even if it is so far away. That no matter how hard we try, in the end trillions of years of intelligence may end up dying a slow, cold, lonely death. It's why I hope that there's is some way to break our current understanding of the laws of the universe, some way to suck new energy out of nothing.

>>6002989
even if the universe wasn't as simulation i will live forever with the knowledge that i won't get to see humanity colonize the solar system or completely understand the nature of the universe, it's okay to not know/experience everything

>>6002795
it will not be forever, you have to remember if we can just approach c our relative travel time decreases as well. at 0.99c we save about 98% travel time

That immortality isn't a thing. No matter what breakthroughs happen, the universe itself will end...

You were born just to die

Quantum mechanics scares the shit out of me.

Zombie cats, quantum tunnelling, entanglement, many worlds, ancient aliens, faster than light travel, quantum computation.... the list goes on forever.

Quantum mechanics means that EVERY scary event you can imagine has a non-zero probability to happen and given the vast size of the multiverse it almost certainly happened already infinitely many times somewhere out there. Blowing my mind and scaring the shit out of me every fucking time.

Alzheimers

forgetting everything you ever done is horrible

>>6003050
lol it's not like you would know though

>>6003054
you would notice it in the early stages

You know what really scares me? 0.999... = 1
There must be some deeper unexplainable mystery in our number system, unnatural forces making it possible for different numbers to be equal.

>>6002815
It's a conjecture made from measurment but it's still possible to explain those measurments with something else.

>>6003058
they aren't different they are both 1 simply written differently... does it bug you that .333333... is equal to a third? a third is an extremely simple concept but get's a little bogged down by a base 10 number system

>>6002829
>The loss of critical peer review as it's slowly replaced with journalistic sensationalism, monetized propoganda, and political influence on scientific work/findings.

/thread

Nothing scares me.

Entropy.
It's terrifying to know that unless we go full TTGL there's nothing we can do about it.

>>6003057
The only thing that scares me with that is the fact that I could be afraid of killing myself after noticing it, and to see myself hesitate until the moment I've lost enought of my rationality to even desire to end my life.

>>6003096
It's sad, not scary.

The lack of a afterlife scares me

>>6003101
would always writing in a notebook help?

after every once in a while you check it and refresh

>>6003071
There is nothing logical about 0.999... = 1
It's plain wrong and lazy.
If 0.999... never ends then it never becomes 1.
Choosing to write 0.999... as 1 is just lazyness.

>>6003106
Well, but there is the possibility of you believing "Well I'm still rational enough, I'm not going to end my life today, let's enjoy life some more time for now.", but in fact, when you become irrational enough to decide to kill yourself (I mean : A point where your old self would have chosen to kill itself), maybe at that time it would already be too late and you'll postpone it, because the truth is : At that time you would already be differet from before, and maybe you wouldn't have the guts to kill yourself anymore, and then just watch yourself getting closer and closer to a vegetable until you no longer care about that.

>>6003037
>zombie cats

>>6003111
there isn't a magical point where you suddenly have "enough 9s" to call .9999.... equal to one, it must be infinite. there isn't a transition, it is only equal to 1 when it is an infinite number of nines

much in the same way that 1/3 = .33333.... not .333 with a trillion threes, but .3333 with infinite threes

you're just selling infinity a little too short with your reasoning

>>6002822
This shit even looks scary to me. Something between how little we know about them, and how much we know about them.

cant quantum fluctuations still occur after the heat death of the universe? Surely at some point another big bang will occur because of this..

right?

>>6003190
NO. Explanations like this are just flat out wrong and are part of the reason why students resist the fact about .999...

The explanation of the equivalency is a necessary attribute of any construction of the reals (that is, any definition for the reals that isn't just "totally ordered field"). It's too involved to give a short blurb about, but any other "explanation" is really just showing that other facts students accept are consistent with .9... = 1

>>6003190
>there isn't a magical point where you suddenly have "enough 9s" to call .9999.... equal to one
Right, because they are not equal.

>it is only equal to 1 when it is an infinite number of nines
You just said there cannot be enough nines to make them equal.

The idea that the universe is not deterministic. It's a general consensus that it is but if it wasn't that would scare me.

> you couldn't know 'everything'

>>6002792
>scared of the universe dying when he would be long dead

top pleb

this thread isnt really scientific, but i have to admit its quite nostalgic

i remember being 5 and telling mom about black holes and how big is the universe and how fucking scared was she while i was completely fucking euphoric and cathartic

good times.

I get scared when I get more than 2 messages on my phone per day
And skeletons
Especially skeletons

>>6003293
right now there is one...inside you!

>>6002859
>"wake up"

We're a byproduct of a computer simulation run by entities of a more complex universe(which is in turn just another simulation). They're testing out of curiosity how 3 spatial dimensions with our particular laws of physics work out.

When you die you won't wake up somewhere, just like your video game NPCs don't wake up in the real world.

>>6002829
>The loss of critical peer review as it's slowly replaced with journalistic sensationalism, monetized propoganda, and political influence on scientific work/findings.
I second that.

>>6003304

This is not exactly something in science that scares me, but the rate at which we deplete our outrageously rare resources--which we can NEVER replace--is haunting.

Why am I afraid of running out of resources? Why do I give a shit whether humanity will ever leave this crowded rock?

That's an even more haunting question, because I can never justify humanity's existence. I suppose I had hoped we could set an example for future sentient species, and act like the 13.798 ± 0.037 billion year olds we are, rather than like we're fucking five and everything in the world suddenly belongs to us. I guess that's just too much to ask.

>>6003203
do you really not understand that infinity has no limit?

>>6003903
Are you saying 0.999... doesn't converge and becomes infinitely large?

>>6003904
no it "becomes" 1

becomes is a bad word because it implies there is a point where you have enough 9s to say "this is equal to one now!"

you're adding infinitely smaller and smaller things, hence why it converges at a the real number 1

>>6002792

The sheer scale of the universe. Our existence on this Earth is more precarious than anything we can imagine.

All of us could be killed tomorrow by a relatively small rock. But then there are whole stars, galaxies, and black holes lurking out there, just waiting to gobble us up whole.

But then there's the unknown. What scares me most is how much we don't know about the universe. Ordinary matter makes up only a tiny portion of all the mass in the universe, that means the greatest dangers could very well be nearly undetectable.

>>6004091

Oh also, the possibility of extremely old and advanced alien civilizations. Possibly the most direct and most unknown threat of all.

>>6003904
Are... are you serious? If not, 8/10.

>>6002830
Did you really think no one else did that?

>>6003904
Bitch

>>6002792
The relatively high chance of getting some type of cancer scares the shit out of me, cause I've had several relatives die of that stuff and it is nasty as fuck.

>>6002792
The Drake equation. Why the fuck are there no aliens? It doesn't look like life is unlikely to form, and even the lowest estimates would have thousands of civilizations within a billion lightyears, and if even one of them built von Neumann machines, they should have reached us. So why haven't they? Why isn't the universe optimized to the needs of one particular race (or what kind of bastards would allow world wars to happen)? With the singularity incoming it looks like we would make it, but what is out there that makes the universe silent?

>>6003316
oh man......

>>6004115

>>6004115
Im think either we are the first (or one of them) or civilizations rise, discover the secrets of the universe including how the universe came to existance, dark matter and its ultimate fate. Then, accepting that there is nothing they can do about it, decide to "retire" spending the rest of time confined to their solar system content with existence. Look at how much we have discovered without leaving Sol! We might not have to leave.

>>6004114
Yeah, this. My family has a notable history of cancer and I have promised myself that if (when) I get it, barring survival chances in the 80%+ range, I'm going to end my life on my own terms.

I will not waste away, suffering, in a hospital bed clinging to a shred of hope. Fuck that. I've seen it happen to people I loved and I refuse to let it happen to me.

>>6003350
>outrageously rare resources--which we can NEVER replace

What are you talking about? Any compond made from the organic atoms can by synthesized, fusion provides millions of years of power from water, and rare elements can be transported in from asteroids and don't leave the system.

>That's an even more haunting question, because I can never justify humanity's existence.
Justify it to what? Who do you think cares about the resources if this planet other than us?

>I suppose I had hoped we could set an example for future sentient species, and act like the 13.798 ± 0.037 billion year olds we are, rather than like we're fucking five and everything in the world suddenly belongs to us.

The five year old universe was an undifferentiated cloud of hot plasma. It had no concept of ownership. The nine billion year old terrans could replicate but they could not think. The thirteen-point-seven-nine billion year old terrans could think, but they had no vision of the world beyond their tribe for a generation or two. Only now, at 13.798 billion years, do we have the concept of planetary stewartship. We are acting our age, sorry to disappoint that we aren't 13.7980002 years old yet.

The idea of parallel universes. Assuming the universe is flat, and quantum states are countable, the nearest identical Earth is probably within <span class="math">10^10^29[/spoiler] meters away. What have my parallel copies done with their lives? Are any of them astronauts? Homeless? How am I doing compared with the other me's?

Source: space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/multiverse.pdf

The idea of parallel universes. Assuming the universe is flat, and quantum states are countable, the nearest identical Earth is probably within <span class="math">10^{10^{29}}[/spoiler] meters away. What have my parallel copies done with their lives? Are any of them astronauts? Homeless? How am I doing compared with the other me's?

Source: space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/multiverse.pdf

>>6004122
Rational optimizers would influence as much as they can as quickly as they can in order to end the current suboptimal state. They would not wait for a signal to come looking for us, they would be everywhere.

>>6004127
> we are the first
There are plenty of generation-II stars four billion years older than us or more.
> Then, accepting that there is nothing they can do about it, decide to "retire" spending the rest of time confined to their solar system content with existence.
I would call you out on excessive anthropomorphisation, but that doesn't sound anything like what humanity would do. So, more generally, it seems extremely unlikely that all evolved sapient organisms would share the same ethics.

>>6004134
>What have my parallel copies done with their lives?
Everything physically possible.

>Are any of them astronauts? Homeless?
Yes, And there are those who are both.

>How am I doing compared with the other me's?
The more significant the difference, the less they are you. Every decision can be made and will be made, somewhere in the space of possibilities. Comparing yourself to them adds nothing beyond considering or judging your choices.

>>6004145
>Rational optimizers
assuming these exist is a rather big leap

>>6002829

This. And science fiction level artificial intelligence.

>>6004154
True, but my fear goes deeper than that. If every physically possible scenario is played out an infinite number of times, it brings every choice in life down to a maximal level of meaninglessness.

Multi-drug resistant bacteria.

They should scare all of you.

That and the eventual next viral pandemic.

Most of the things I see on /sci/ on 4chan scare me

>>6002822
Will I live long enough to see real photos of black holes? THAT would be scary.

>>6004155
No, it isn't. 99.999% or more of radio-capable civilizations could fail to unleash one, and they would still be everywhere in the universe. "Rationality" is necessary for efficiency and "optimization" is at least an extremely useful way to make any decision, which most general-AI designers would pick.

>>6003111
its perfectly logical
1/3=.333...
x3 x3
2/3=.666...
x3 x3
3/3=.999...

>>6003006
summed up beautifully.
look up this:
http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm
long read but definitely worth it. Isaac Asimov