Why Cosmic Evolution Matters: Crash Course Big History #201

Crash Course: Big History

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Hi, I’m Emily Graslie, and welcome to season two of Crash Course blips of energy usually don’t affect the physics of the larger world.
Big History. But, during inflation, they were suddenly clear when the Universe
became big, causing slight inequalities in matter and energy.
In the first 10 episodes of Big History, we followed the history of the
Universe from the Big Bang into the Deep Future. The theme of this These wrinkles created all the complexity that was to follow.
season is “Why Does This Matter?” As fascinating as the tale of Without these unequal distributions of energy, there wouldn’t have
13.8 billion years is – from the vast cosmos to ancient life on Earth – been enough energy for stars to burn, for supernovae to explode,
one has to wonder why learning about this history is relevant to our for planets to form, for life to exist, and for us to be here. We are the
own fleeting lives in this world. children of those tiny wrinkles, and the events that happened during
cosmic inflation were the bedrock of the next 13.8 billion years.
You don’t exactly need to know about the Big Bang to fill out your
tax returns. But the reason we learn big history is the same reason Know this part of the story, and you know where you came from, in
we learn any history at all. History matures us, seasons our the most extreme sense of the phrase. A second theory holds that
attitudes, and enriches our perspectives. cosmic inflation may imply something curious about our Universe
that has become known as the eternal inflation hypothesis,
If we read enough human history, going back thousands of years, originally developed by Paul Steinhardt. Let’s go to the Thought
we live a thousand lives. If we don’t read history, we live only one. Bubble.
Let’s take that thought one step further.
According to eternal inflation, the cosmic inflation that happened in
Never mind the past 5,000 years of written history, or even the past a tiny, tiny sliver of a second may still be going on, for billions and
250,000 years that human beings have existed on the planet. By billions of years, elsewhere in the Universe. Our cosmic bubble,
traversing the crash and thunder of the cosmos, to the tooth and which is 93 billion light years across, is no longer in a state of
claw of the evolutionary epic, we are transported across billions of eternal inflation. The Universe continues to expand, and even
years. In a world that has learned so much about the cosmos, and a accelerate in that expansion, but not quite at the breakneck speed
humanity that grows ever more closely interwoven in the 21st of inflation.
century, it pays to know the history of the Universe and our planet
as well as we know, say, the past 200 years of our national The eternal inflation hypothesis implies that, within the sea of
histories. eternal inflation, new bubbles are popping up all the time. Other
universes in a multiverse! Our fundamental laws of physics formed
Learn about Big History, and hopefully the world around you will during inflation.
appear as one long continuum to which you belong, indivisible and
unbroken since the Big Bang, with an underlying pattern that unites It is highly conceivable that other sets of fundamental laws would
it all. Human to human, and humanity to the Universe. It is a great govern these other universes, and these laws and rules would be
leap forward into a wider world. completely foreign to our own. And there is a staggering number of
possible sets of physical laws, about 10 to the power of 500. That’s
INTRO a 1 with 500 zeros.

In the Big Bang episode of Crash Course Big History, we learned And that’s not the number of other universes in a multiverse, but
about how our view of the Universe evolved in the early 20th the possible set of rules on which an almost infinite number of
century, leading into how our view of the Universe continues to universes could operate. Even when the cosmic bubbles that come
evolve with every fascinating theory and new discovery. One such into existence in that vast inflationary sea operate on the same
theory is cosmic inflation, a theory about what happened a split rules, they can have completely different outcomes. It’s possible
second after the Big Bang. It was originally devised in the 1980s by the outcomes are similar, but slightly different to ours. 1.
Alan Guth, to explain why the early Universe was so smooth and
stable. A universe out there may exist where you watch this video
approximately 30 seconds later. 2. Or a universe out there may
At approximately 10 to the power of negative 35 to negative 32 exist where I was never born. 3. A universe may exist where
seconds, the Universe expanded rapidly from being about the size everything is made out of diamonds or pizza or something
of a quantum particle, to the size of a grapefruit. This is completely different from atoms. 4.
stupendously fast. Even though the Universe is expanding fast
today, it’s still way slower than it was. And many universes would exist without any stars or forms of
complexity at all. Dead universes, where… everything is dead.
If a grapefruit-sized universe expanded at the same speed as Thanks Thought Bubble.
during cosmic inflation, in another split second, it would be the size
of our current Universe, about 93 billion light years across. If the So, from here, physicists have postulated that the behaviour of
early Universe had expanded at its slower, present day rate, gravity Universes may operate under some form of “natural selection” like
would have been too strong and sucked more clumps of matter and species do in nature - but for the cosmos. By some variable or
energy together, and the Universe would not be as evenly another, some universes make it into existence, and some do not.
distributed. There would be huge inequalities, enormous heavy Or, more mind-bogglingly, that certain universes give rise to forms
chunks of energy that are billions of light years across. of extremely complex, intelligent, and powerful life that over time
gain the ability to create and shape new universes, in a form of
But the Universe expanded so fast during cosmic inflation that it cosmic artificial selection.
was smoothed out, with no huge chunks of matter and energy
anywhere. Instead we see a largely homogeneous Universe with Sort of like how we breed different kinds of dogs or pigeons. All of
just a smattering of tiny unequal wrinkles that created stars. And this is truly “out there” but that’s how our view of the Universe
that’s another reason why cosmic inflation was so important. continues to evolve. The Big Bang theory might have seemed
preposterous to most scientists 150 years ago.
When the Universe was still very, very small, at the quantum scale,
tiny fluctuations were popping in and out of existence. These tiny Give us another 1000 years of scientific advancement, and who

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 Why Cosmic Evolution Matters: Crash Course Big History #201
Crash Course: Big History
https://youtube.com/watch?v=L-T2SSsMREM
https://nerdfighteria.info/v/L-T2SSsMREM

knows what our picture of the Universe may look like. As it is, Cloudy with a chance of absolute zero, or windy with a possibility of
eternal inflation implies that our cosmic bubble, already a massive a vicious atom shredding later in the afternoon? Finally, a last
93 billion light years across, may actually be a very tiny bubble theory asks if the Universe is even real, or is it a simulation that our
indeed, in a giant cosmic ocean known as the multiverse that is just minds are inhabiting? This is actually the subject of some very
teeming with other bubbles. As furiously as scientists are working at interesting speculations by scientists and philosophers, like Nick
unravelling the beginnings of our Universe, it has remained a very Bostrom.
curious question about how the Universe will “end” -- whatever end
means when you’re talking about something infinite. Just think about how far video games have come since the 1980s.
Extend that rate of progress another 500 years. A simulated
For a long time, the most intuitive and prevailing theory was the Big Universe isn’t so fanciful on that scale.
Bounce. That is, the expansion of the Universe continues to be
slowed down by the force of gravity. Eventually, many billions upon According to Bostrom, one of the following statements must be true:
billions of years from now, the Universe begins to contract. * Either such total simulations are impossible to create.
* Or, it is possible to create them but such an advanced society
Gravity sucks everything, all matter, all energy, back into the would put that computational power to better use.
singularity from which it sprang. The immense pressure that forms * Or, they are possible to create, advanced societies do create
that singularity forces everything out again in yet another Big Bang. them, and as a result there is a high likelihood we are currently
And the whole cycle begins anew. living in a simulation rather than a base reality. Why? Because, as
Elon Musk puts it, given the rapid rate of technological
Expanding, contracting, over and over and over. Hence the name: advancements in virtual reality, if we are one day going to create
Big Bounce. And it makes logical sense, right? those simulations anyway, the odds of us existing in the base reality
that produces them really low.
After all, what goes up, must come down. And there is another
appeal to the theory. That of birth, death, and rebirth. But does a simulation reflect the outside Universe that created it?
Or is the simulation a made-up, sort of fantasy reality? If it is the
A circle of life, not just for nature and the characters of the Lion latter it would explain why physical laws only make sense to a
King, but one for the entire Universe. This is by far the most certain point and why, when we get down to the scale of quantum
cheerful and pleasing scenario for the end of the Universe. And, physics, things seem so much more unpredictable.
alas, now the least likely one.
In a way, the pixels “blur” when we look that closely at the screen.
The Big Bounce presumes that eventually the expansion of the However this may just be a convenient explanation to otherwise
Universe will slow down. But, we now know it’s not slowing down. much more puzzling questions about quantum physics. It is,
It’s accelerating. perhaps, a bit too convenient.

There are many hypotheses about why, one of the most prominent But intriguing all the same. In the 21st century, science has
being the influence of the mysterious force of dark energy. So, there advanced by leaps and bounds. Humanity meanwhile is becoming
are two more likely scenarios. The first is the Big Rip. more interdependent and in need of a common story.

If the expansion of the Universe continues to accelerate at an Our evolving view of the Universe continues to form the bedrock of
insanely fast rate, then the distances between things would become that story, and as that view changes, so too will the view of
virtually infinite. This means the forces that hold the Universe ourselves as a part of the grand unfolding tale of 13.8 billion years.
together would be destroyed. The gravity that holds the stars in the Thanks for watching, see you next time.
galaxy together would be too weak and the Milky Way would fly
apart.

The planets would be ripped away from the Sun. Eventually the
strong and weak nuclear forces that hold together atoms would be
shorn apart as well. The scariest part of this scenario is how soon it
could happen.

Even within 10 or 20 billion years, which implies the Universe is

roughly middle-aged. The final scenario, and currently the most
likely, is one that we covered in episode 10 of season one of Crash
Course Big History: Heat Death or the Big Freeze. In this scenario,
the Universe continues to expand for trillions upon trillions of years
till all forms of complexity exhaust themselves and break down.

Stars flicker out, matter dissolves back into energy, and the
Universe becomes an evenly distributed weak ball of energy. The
inequalities in energy created during inflation finally disappear.
While not the most cheerful end to our story, it is decidedly less
violent than the Big Rip.

And it gives complexity in the Universe a great deal more time to

exist - on the scale of trillions of years. Time and more research will
tell whether the Big Rip or the Big Freeze is more likely. Keep your
eye on the experts as they continue to update you on the
Universe’s most terrifying weather forecast.

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