Do all particles decay over time?

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jenface

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Okay I know this is a very vague question and I don't even know if I've worded it correctly.

So what I mean when I say "all particles" is really...everything from uranium (which I know decays over time) to say hydrogen or WHATEVER as I'm completely aware that these may be poor examples.

I'm really curious also as to the fate of photons... Do they just zoom along into eternity or do they eventually lose steam and fizzle out?

If the universe continues to expand and all matter eventually finds itself alone what happens to it? Does it just hang out from now until whenever or does it gradually fade away?

This may be a stupid question but I'd really appreciate your input, even if its just "DUH!"

Thanks Alot!
Jenn
 
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vogon13

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Electrons apparently are stable for longish periods of time ( >> 10^50 years ??), protons, on the other hand, appear to be stable out to 10^33 or 10^34 years, at least, but they might very slowly decay to positrons and some other fluff.


When contemplating these distant aeons, consider most matter by then might be expected to be snarfed by blackholes, and over the next 10^100 years or so after that, will be dribbled back into the universe as extremely low energy photons, and that they will further loose energy as the universe continues to expand, even then.

The ultimate fate of all matter and energy in the universe is to be vastly, enormously, and totally diluted in a seemingly infinite sized universe.

This should serve to further sadden you in those dark moments we all experience . . . .
 
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jenface

Guest
Wow okay so snarfed by black holes and pooped out as extremely weak light particles and/or doomed to fluff barely worth mentioning in a seemingly infinite universe.....


So then what?
I bet the universe gets bored and pops out some more fluff!!!
 
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vogon13

Guest
Once the universe is (essentially?) empty, time stops (there is nothing for which to impinge upon) and then since you have a 'random psuedo infinite' elapsed interval, a new universe will pop instantly into existence. But most likely that universe will be very different from this one.

The most sparse (hypothetical) one I've heard about was discussed here a few years ago and only had 4 photons in it. As for the least sparse one, it might be the fluidic one from Star Trek: Voyager.
 
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zazaban

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vogon13":3oztqyw1 said:
The most sparse (hypothetical) one I've heard about was discussed here a few years ago and only had 4 photons in it.

!


Do you have a link to that discussion?
 
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MeteorWayne

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This also is more of a Physics discussion that an SS&A one, so may get moved in the next day or so. We'll see how the discussion goes.
 
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vogon13

Guest
zazaban":37lgor4y said:
vogon13":37lgor4y said:
!


Do you have a link to that discussion?



Don't have to, I made the post.

The 4 photon universe was a thought experiment of mine in trying to out fox Stephen Hawking in creating a 'special' universe where information could be destroyed, albeit, very slowly.

Imagine a very large and empty infinite expanse of total void.

Then imagine a rather low wattage Big Bang in that universe that creates only 4 photons, 2 vertically polarized and heading left at a fair fraction of C, and 2 horizontally polarized photons heading right at the same velocity. (orientations are all mutually relevant to the 4 photons) (also note in this universe conservation of momentum, baryon number, and angular momentum are all observed). This universe expands just like our universe, and the photons experience increasing redshift as time elapses. The information encoded in the orientation of the photons will be slowly, but inevitably erased as their energies asymptotically approach zero after a fairly lengthy interval. So we have a universe, quite similar to ours (only dramatically less full) that appears to erase information.

Slowly.


I also readily concede I may not have had a clue as to what Hawking was talking about in the first place . . .
 
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dragon04

Guest
Can you imagine though? Some day, everywhere, some life form will be typing away at his keyboard when every particle in the universe suddenly decays as he's ty
 
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jenface

Guest
When you say essentially empty do you mean basically just so diluted that what small remnant there is basically amounts to nothing? Just a very small amount spread over a nearly infinite space?


I thought the universe "began" as a singularity???

Although the more I think about it the more I wonder if that really doesn't mean what I originally thought since my understanding is that a singularity is a point where matter is infinitely condensed so I guess...I don't know.
Thanks for answering my question though!! :D
 
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yevaud

Guest
Well...

Technically, there was no super-agglomeration of matter, all collected into a point-source. There was frankly nothing, except some sort of continuum. Then a random quantum fluctuation occurred, and from that the entire Big Bang sprang forth.

Consider the Casimir Effect, Quantum Foam / Zero Point Energy, and what it all actually implies.
 
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vogon13

Guest
jenface":84juhc3p said:
When you say essentially empty do you mean basically just so diluted that what small remnant there is basically amounts to nothing? Just a very small amount spread over a nearly infinite space?


I thought the universe "began" as a singularity???

Although the more I think about it the more I wonder if that really doesn't mean what I originally thought since my understanding is that a singularity is a point where matter is infinitely condensed so I guess...I don't know.
Thanks for answering my question though!! :D


Our universe is really, really young. The Big Bang just happened. These time intervals, 10^50 to 10^99 years are enormous, and note, 10^50 years compared to 10^99 years is NOTHING. Our universe is expanding at a fast clip, and it appears that never, ever stops. The stuff of the universe continues to be spread out over vastly larger and larger volumes of void. Imagine a zone, the size of our current universe with but a single, extremely feeble photon in it. Every descendant photon of our universe will someday be that alone, and our universe continues to expand even then. Run the expansion another 10^99 years, and you can scour enormously vast reaches of apparently boundless void and find absolutely nothing. And then the universe expands for another 10^99 years.

And realize, as far as we know, this goes on for ever and ever and ever . . . .
 
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jenface

Guest
Is the expanding universe just creating more "nothing" to expand into by expanding???
 
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vogon13

Guest
jenface":2lfli1c5 said:
Is the expanding universe just creating more "nothing" to expand into by expanding???


I have been grinding on this for a couple of days now.

Let me start with this:

the universe is dissipating into an infinite void of something that is not anything; matter, energy, virtual particles, zip, nada, blanko, etc..

Use of the term expanding' carries the concept of something getting bigger, when actually, the expanding something is simultaneously becoming more and more ethereal. The distinction between that which is expanding, and what is expanding into is decreasing to the point of irrelevancy.

As the universe dilutes itself into nothing, our language and concepts for describing this end state fail us. Our universe becomes more and more indistinguishable from the primordial zero it emerged from.
 
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vogon13

Guest
Here is another factor helping make everything go away.

As whatever is left in the dissipated universe cools off, it will form a more and more 'intense' Bose-Einstein condensate.

A B-EC is formed when something is so cold, it's energy becomes so precisely defined (zero) that it's position becomes more and more indeterminate. So as the universe cools down, the stuff that is left becomes blurry. IIRC, most B-EC made on earth so far are measured in centimeters, but consider a universe so cold that the materials left form B-EC that are lightyears, mega-lightyears, 10^100 lightyears across.

The material would not really be anywhere, but simultaneously, it would be everywhere (if cold enough).

If you wanted to bring something back, you could add some energy, but then you face the puzzle of where to stick it.

Weird and weirder . . .
 
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