90ways - Science

This particular story is not so much about something that happened to me as it is about something that didn't quite happen to all of us -- from you to me to the grizzly bears to the planet to the sun to the entire cosmos. It takes place in three acts.

Act I: When they exploded the first atomic bomb, they weren't quite sure what was going to happen, but there were a number of scientists who were worried that it might ignite all the nitrogen in the atmosphere, thereby incinerating the entire planet and killing us all. Good.

Act II: They still regularly carry out physics experiments that "might end the universe."

Act III: Nobody checked with me before they did any of these things.

In addition to the host of things already wrong with nuclear weapons, I think potentially incinerating the entire planet should have been added to the list long, long ago. Perhaps before all this idiocy even started. In the months leading up to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, one member of the Manhattan project in particular, Edward Teller, voiced significant concerns. He was of the mind that detonating an atomic device might encourage a fusion reaction between any two nitrogen nuclei that happened to get in its way, giving off tremendous amounts of energy and essentially igniting the atmosphere.

Now it turns out that Teller was wrong, which, incidentally, didn't stop him from trying to advance a host of other slightly off-center notions throughout the rest of his years. After tests with various types of atomic weapons did in fact reveal that they would not immediately incinerate us all, Teller thought it would probably be OK to invent the hydrogen bomb. Which was nice of him. He also testified against Robert Oppenheimer in the loyalty hearings that Oppenheimer was forced to endure during the 1950s. No longer welcome in academic science circles after that stunt, Teller found a home as pet scientist to various political causes. He was the father of Ronald Reagan's Star Wars program and advocated vigorously for arms escalation; he championed a plan to use atomic weapons to build a deep-water harbor near Point Hope, Alaska; in a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal, he claimed that Jane Fonda gave him a heart attack by protesting nuclear energy use at Three Mile Island (it turns out the ad was paid for by Dresser Industries, manufacturer of one of the valves that had malfunctioned in the Three Mile Island accident); and he won a Presidential Medal of Freedom from George W Bush in 2003.

So maybe Edward Teller isn't the best person to believe about experiments ending the universe. But that doesn't change the fact that our tax dollars empower scientist to carry on activities -- activities that are subject to no democratic checks of any kind -- that might end all of existence.

In my mind, if the universe were to end tomorrow, it would have led a life cut tragically short. By most reasonable estimates, the universe is not supposed to end for another seven hundred and fifty quadrillion years (I am not making this up -- people, and a good many of them at that, actually get paid to sit around and think about when the universe is going to end). The good news on that front is that the universe is only about 1/50,000,000 of that age right now. And if you want to split hairs, the universe will only begin to end seven hundred and fifty quadrillion years from now. It will take another seven hundred and fifty quadrillion years after that for it to become an infinitely small point of infinite mass and infinite temperature. So how much extra time does that give you? I'm not quite sure because I don't know what happens when you add quadrillions together, but I think it's somewhere around 10 to 34th power.

And imagine for a minute if you were the idiot physicist that actually did end the universe. Boy, would you feel dumb. Or at least very unlucky. On the bright side, you couldn't really get in trouble. And that's nice, I guess. Except for the fact that it would only be because you were dead, along with EVERYTHING ELSE THAT EVER EXISTED.

Not long ago I asked a PhD student in theoretical physics about this thing where his experiments might end the universe and all. He gave me some vague assurances and offered some kind words about bosons and their ilk. And I guess I'm prepared to just take what he says on faith. What else can I do? And when you really think about it, can we, as humans, really be capable of ending the entire universe? In truth, I think it might be our own ignorance that saves us on this one. Imagine if you sat down and tried to teach a monkey calculus: it just wouldn't work. I think it might be the same thing for us and the workings of the universe: maybe we just will never get it.

Additionally, if we are right and somewhere around seven hundred and fifty quadrillion years will elapse between the beginning of the end of the universe and the end of the end of the universe, what do we care if we end the universe? And if that is the case, maybe we already did end the universe, which means we probably owe someone a pretty big apology by now.

These scientists -- the ones who sit around and think about the end of the universe all day -- have one last theory: when the universe ends, there is a chance that it just ends, but there is also a chance that it will bounce right back again. I'm still pinning my hopes on this one working out, and I'm also hoping, for the sake of the children twenty five quadrillion generations from now, that we are all a little more careful the next time around.