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Name: Until the End of Time
Rating: 4.5 (106 reviews)
Author: Brian Greene

Brian Greene

Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe

4.5 (106 Bewertungen)

28 Min.

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Naturwissenschaft Das Weltall

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Until the End of Time
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What’s in it for me? A deep scientific dive into the biggest questions in physics, history, and culture.

You probably know that the universe started with a bang – a big one, even. But what does the big bang have to do with human evolution, and our species’ finest achievements, like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, or Serena Williams’ epic forehand? What does your cat have in common with a black hole? A lot more, it turns out, than you might think. Everything in the universe is composed of particles in a different formation. And everything in the universe is subject to the same forces: evolution for construction, and entropy for inevitable destruction.

In these blinks, you’ll follow the relationship between humans and the universe, from our understanding of how it started, our best guess of how it all will end, and how we evolved to interact with the world around us in a totally unprecedented way.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

about the catastrophic single event that created seasons on Earth as well as our moon;
how language, religion, and the arts helped humans become a more successful species; and
how everything in the universe will eventually end up in a black hole.

Everything that has ever existed, from planet earth to your favorite sweater, exists because of entropy.

You’ve heard that death and taxes are the only inevitabilities in life, right? Well, entropy is the death part of the equation. Now, death and destruction aren’t the most popular kids at school, but the fact that all things must come to an end does have a way of helping us appreciate the good things in life. The new leaves of spring are even more glorious because we know they’ll eventually turn red and fall. Your child’s birthdays are all the more precious because you know she’ll grow up before you know it.

From a physics perspective, entropy is the disorganizing principle that puts all existence and achievement into context, because it imposes a limit. We can’t just innovate forever, either individually or as a species, because eventually – hate to break it to you – we’re all going to die.

The key message here is: Everything that has ever existed, from planet earth to your favorite sweater, exists because of entropy.

The second law of thermodynamics tells us that there is an overwhelming tendency for things to degrade into disorder, or move into a state of higher entropy. Take your desk – if it is not already in a state of high entropy, it’s likely that it will evolve toward it. For an ordered system to retain its low-entropy status, it has to transfer this build-up of entropy to its environment.

Every tangible thing in the universe, from the galactic Milky Way to the candy bar melting in your handbag, is an ordered arrangement of specific particles in an extremely low-entropy configuration. Universally speaking, high-entropy configurations are a dime a dozen, because they’re a loose collection of non-specific particles in no particular order. So when we encounter a low-entropy configuration, we should sit up and take notice. Particles would never just coalesce into a bicycle or an egg. There have to be powerful organizing influences at work to put them in order, and keep them that way.

Given that high entropy is the most common state for particles in the universe, how do we explain all the low-entropy configurations you hold dear, like, say, your friends and family? Even further, what happens to all that entropy that is expelled as waste from low-entropy configurations, everything from stars in the night sky to your bedside table?

The answer is something you’ve definitely heard of: the big bang. This was a highly-ordered, very low-entropy, one-in-a-trillion-trillion-trillion situation. And get ready, because what happened next is pretty wild.

Repulsive gravity was the catalyst for the big bang, as well as the formation of stars – the first things in our universe.

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 natural life cycle of stars created the ingredients to make planets, as well as life on earth.

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.

Life acquired consciousness, which is governed by natural laws not free will.

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.

Humans adapted the capacity for language, and then storytelling, which helped our species succeed.

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.

Humans adapted to find comfort in religion, because it aids group cohesion and mitigates our innate fear of death.

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.

When humans started making and experiencing art, our social bonds and problem solving skills were strengthened.

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?

Our best guess is that Earth, the sun, and all the other stars and planets will eventually be pulled into black holes.

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.

Long after the black holes disappear, space as we know it will change – but life may someday reemerge.

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.

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Worum geht es in Until the End of Time?

Until the End of Time (2020) is an accessible, informal look at the loftiest topics of all time: time, the universe, and humanity’s never ending quest for meaning. Physicist Brian Greene begins at the very beginning – the big bang that set off this whole crazy spectacle – then zooms in to examine the evolution of human culture, from religion, language, and the arts. Finally, he zooms back out to examine what might become of the universe, and whether there might ever be a reemergence of life.

Wer Until the End of Time lesen sollte

Exploratory minds
Science buffs with a poetic streak
Far-futurists

Über den Autor

Brian Greene is a theoretical physicist and string theorist. He is the author of five books on physics written for the general public. Along with his wife, he is the co-founder of the World Science Festival, intended to cultivate a general public informed by science.

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