Until the End of Time summary

Gravity seems like an easy enough concept, right? Big things have attractive power, pulling smaller things toward them. 

Sure, that’s part of it. But that’s not the whole story.

The first atomic species, from which every single thing in the universe derives, had only eight-and-a-half minutes to form. These first stalwart atoms clumped together in the immediate aftermath of the big bang, when the temperature was just right. Ten minutes after the big bang, it was already too late.

More complex atoms, those essential to life, were formed in the super-hot core of big stars, whose stable light and heat gave them a longer window of opportunity.

Scientists generally concern themselves with observable phenomena. Legend has it that Isaac Newton made his famous realization about gravity only after being bonked on the head by a falling apple. Charles Darwin came up with his theories of evolution after observing birds in the Galapagos Islands. Conversely, Einstein’s theory of relativity is famously obtuse, partially because its components were largely theoretical. Some of his theories were proven only after decades of peering through telescopes.

It’s unsurprising, then, that scientists largely avoid studying consciousness. Entropy and evolution help us understand the observable world. But consciousness isn’t observable.

Think about all the conversations you’ve had this week, whether at work, at home, or out with friends. Between work reports, the news, art, and the weather, you’ve probably covered a lot of ground, right? But you might be leaving out one important category. If you’re like most of us, gossip comprises approximately 60 percent of your conversations. If you feel embarrassed and petty right now, don’t. The human predilection for language – and gossip – actually gave us an evolutionary advantage.

The key message here is: Humans adapted the capacity for language, and then storytelling, which helped our species succeed.

As intelligence matures, the same impulse we have to understand our surroundings acts as an urge to imbue experience with significance. Our ancestors had to make tools and farm crops, but once those things became easier, they also had to answer the central question we all still face: What is it all for?

Humans are natural pattern seekers. We want to understand, and explain, why events happen. Before we had microscopes and telescopes, we had to develop a way to understand powerful events happening in our world, like a lightning strike or a swarm of locusts. Religion developed as a way of explaining the seemingly unexplainable.

Humans used myths and religion as a way to make sense of the world, and make technological advancements that made survival easier. At a certain point, we developed the instinct to creatively engage with the world around us. We started to make, and appreciate, art.

But here we’re faced with the same problem we had with the question of religion. What sparked the imaginative impulse? And, given that artistic expression doesn’t confer an increased likelihood of survival, why did our ancestors bother with it when they could have been gathering berries or sharpening their tools?

Every culture has an idea of forever. Whether we’re talking about diamonds or the eternal, undying devotion of your Labradoodle, infinity is a natural preoccupation for humans.

Sadly, nothing is forever. Everything on Earth will die or degrade, including you, everyone you know, and – sorry – Fido. Just as evolution is instrumental in building structure, entropy inevitably degrades it. But these two forces don’t necessarily work in tandem. There’s no sell-by date at which point entropy has to begin breaking down a system. Structure can exist as long as entropy is also expelled. When entropy stops being expelled efficiently, the structure will begin to break down.

Einstein’s theory of relativity is definitely too complicated for us to get into here in the last blink. Suffice it to say, it includes a few thoughts on black holes. Einstein’s idea was that whenever something falls into a black hole, it’s gone forever. Its energy is transferred into the entropy of the black hole itself.

But Einstein stopped short of guessing what might happen to the black holes themselves, after they’d eaten up every particle in the universe and presumably become massive.