There are treats for the mind, not just the eyes, in the magnificence of our universe.

To Ponder or to Wonder?

Have you ever spent time wondering the nature of the universe? Have you ever stared at some of nature's wonders and thought about their origins? Many people want to learn more about the world and how we fit into it, but we are put off by the technical language used in physics textbooks. In order to examine some of the most challenging and fascinating subjects in the world, physicist Brian Greene set out to create a user-friendly guide because he believed that no one should be prevented from exploring the truths about the universe.

In his latest book, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe," renowned physicist Brian Greene takes readers on a journey through the cosmos as he explores the deepest questions of existence. By diving into the complexities of the universe, Greene seeks to unravel the mysteries of human consciousness and our search for meaning in a world that is constantly evolving. Additionally, you'll discover how the self has evolved, free will, and our interactions with language, religion, and the craft of storytelling. 

And you’re in for a surprise! Find out why your cat shares surprising similarities with a black hole, revealing a commonality that extends throughout the universe. 

All that exists in the cosmos is made up of the same particles - they’re just arranged differently. They either undergo evolution to gain power and complexity, or come to an end through entropy.

Dive in to find out the start of the universe, its end, and everything in between!

You had one job gravity. One job.

Gravity, despite its seeming simplicity, extends beyond basic attraction between two masses. Albert Einstein proposed the concept of repelling gravity. Unlike normal gravity's familiar pull force, repelling gravity pushes outward rather than inward. This concept is important in understanding our origins.

Consider a speck-sized space fragment packed with something not fully understood - the unknown ‘dark energy’. Now, when this energy is compressed together, like in Earth and other planets, it causes gravity that pulls everything towards it to its center.

However, when unstructured, it produces repulsion rather than attraction. This process caused the Big Bang 14 billion years ago, launching the cosmos into existence with stars as its first products. It only took a fraction of a second. This process is what gives us a universe, continuously expanding at an astounding rate.

Dark energy converted into particle mist clouds shortly after the Big Bang. repulsive energy filled the small space. Although generally fairly homogeneous, these clouds had denser patches with stronger gravitational pulls that attracted surrounding particles. These concentrations gave birth to highly dense, hot clumps capable of starting nuclear processes and ultimately in star formation after millions of years.

The massive energy that goes into the gaseous core, makes the core a highly organized and ordered system. i.e. a system that has moved from high entropy to low entropy. This entropy that is offset is transferred to outside of the core. This allows the energy-entropy equilibrium to be maintained i.e. in a system, as energy increases, entropy decreases.

All low entropy items, like your pen, the stars, and of course yourself, utilize this system. They use forces like gravity or nuclear forces, increasing their energy and maintaining their low entropy, discharging any additional entropy into the environment.

What happens at the end of this process in stars?

Well, nuclear fusion in a newly created star maintains brilliance for millennia, shooting complex atoms and light into the universe beyond. These emissions have contributed to the existence of life, including us.

The Phoenix is a mythological creature that rises from its own ashes and lives a life of immortality, illuminating and giving to the space around it. A star is essentially a phoenix, but more. By more I mean it's real. 

In just eight and a half minutes after the Big Bang, cosmic foundations, the primordial atoms from which everything comes, manifested incredibly quickly. Due to optimum temperature, these building blocks formed so quickly after the big bang (give it 2 more minutes and it’d have been too late for these to form).

Nuclear fusion then produced complex elements necessary for life within huge star cores. The persistent brilliance and heat of stars aided this material synthesis over time.

Nuclear fusion further produces a variety of elements when stars evolve. Heavy elements such as platinum and plutonium are ejected into space as stars die or collide. These interact with other elements, resulting in the formation of stars, planets, and, eventually, life.

Our sun may be traced back to the first stars, which formed planets millions of years ago. The formative processes of our sun over time led to the creation of the planets in our own solar system.

The edges of our solar system were cooler as they were further away from the sun. It was in these regions that gas giants like Neptune & Jupiter originated from lighter components like Hydrogen emitted by the sun. Heavier elements merged in warmer regions closer to the sun, forming rocky planets like Venus, Earth, and Mars.

The early years of Earth were turbulent. A collision with another planet, Theia, 50-100 million years after creation has had long-term consequences. This event evaporated the Earth's crust and converted water to steam (hence our atmosphere!), with Theia’s remnants resulting in the formation of the moon. It also caused seasons by tilting the Earth's axis.

The Earth cooled over time, the atmospheric steam condensing to re-generate oceans. Water, as the birthplace of life, inspired the well-known belief that life is a vessel for water. We've flipped the script, and water is now within us.

So now that we have some clues as to the origins of life, let us look into how life may have become intelligent and conscious.

Consciousness is a very abstract term. It's very hard to wrap your head around it and what it exactly means. For this reason, scientists have directed their attention elsewhere.

And that is why the following departs beyond biological life and dives into hypotheses concerning the emergence of awareness within life.

The crux is the idea that life has gained consciousness, following natural principles rather than arising from free will.

Humans, like all entities, are made up of particles that follow natural rules. Interactions within our brains are similar to those found on planets or any other matter. However, these exchanges do not directly convert into emotions.

Your perception of an object is the product of your brain processing various information in real time. Instead of having isolated experiences, your mind weaves things together to form cohesive views. Conscious awareness serves to collect and integrate disparate information. For example, if you are holding a red pen, your eyes will transmit the color, texture, and shape of the pen to your brain. Your hands will transmit the feel of holding the pen - is it metallic or plastic? Your nose will transmit the smell emanating from it, and your eyes the clanking sound it makes against the table. You won’t think about and feel all of these individually, one by one. All these streams of information will be combined by your brain to give you a cohesive experience. You’ll be feeling or thinking - “I am holding a steel red pen that smells like dried ink and is clanging against the table. 

However, being conscious does not imply complete control over decisions. Regardless of its importance, free will is a construct.

The brain never stops working, often continuing to operate unintentionally. It streamlines facts to emphasize survival and critical problems while ignoring trivialities. Even spontaneous decisions or memories like deciding to binge-watch a movie or thinking about your first love seem to emerge randomly and spontaneously. While decisions appear to emerge from nowhere, they are the result of sophisticated processes in your brain.

Despite the appearance of self-generated ideas, they are caused by particle motions in the brain and hence governed by laws of physics just like all other matter. We only have limited autonomy.

I think the title is pretty self-explanatory.

Your conversations are almost always around the topics that are close to your heart. Maybe your work, sports, or literally anything that you’re associated with. But don't forget about one important aspect: gossip. Surprisingly, more than 60% of our talks revolve around gossip. Rather than feeling humiliated, acknowledge that our proclivity for words, especially gossip, has provided us evolutionary advantage.

The core idea is that humans not only evolved language but also narrative, which is critical to our species' survival.

Tracing our physical evolution through fossils, but the origins of language are not so easy to fathom. Scientists have speculated different theories about its origins and evolution.

Famed linguist Noam Chomsky suggested that roughly 80,000 years ago, a single brain event triggered our ability to communicate. The study of fossil remains revealed distinct genetic roots for speech. It suggested that the ability to speak happened after humans and chimps diverged on the evolutionary path.

However, the development of language that took advantage of this new ability to speak was still a mystery. Various ideas exist to try to explain this. According to one idea, language evolved through communal living (which is animals living in tribes and packs) and the community grooming rituals that arise from it - for example, monkeys cleaning off fleas from other monkeys in their social group. Grooming became insufficient as groups grew in size. Language evolved to establish relationships with other groups in different territories, with gossip playing an important role.

Language, in whatever form it took, altered human history forever - paving the way for a new powerful human trait - storytelling.

Stories were likely more than just for pleasure. Our forefathers did not rely on myths to survive. Storytelling took attention away from important survival chores like hunting. So, what's the point?

Stories, like a pilot utilizing a simulator, are likely to have helped people prepare for obstacles. Terrifying stories may have helped humans remember to comprehend life-saving signals. Ignoring rustling sounds and considering it wind, rather than a predator, could be dangerous.

However, stories transcend just those uses. Some religions may have also used them to comprehend our origins.

Green says that despite its discussion of gloomy subjects such as death and punishment, religion provides a source of comfort for many. What is its most important offering? Purpose.

As intellect develops, the impulse to comprehend one's surroundings turns into a search for meaning. In the midst of tool-making and agriculture, early humans faced a timeless conundrum: What is the significance of it all?

Humans are predisposed to recognize patterns and decode occurrences. They needed a means to understand events like lightning and locusts because they lacked equipment like telescopes. In Greene’s view, religion arose to provide explanations for the mysterious.

The premise is that humans have evolved to seek solace in religion, owing to its role in uniting groups and alleviating our natural fear of mortality.

Religion has roots that go back almost as far as human cognition, and some believe it contributes to our adaptability.

Religion mostly benefits social dynamics. Loyalty preservation became more complicated when tribes grew in size. While protecting kin is instinctive, clan survival requires broader solidarity. Green says religion developed extended family-like bonds, encouraging loyalty and solidarity.

Furthermore, religion promotes reproduction. Many faiths have an all-seeing adjudicator of behavior who discourages activities that harm one's reputation. Adherents avoid infractions, consequently being more attractive in the eyes of potential mates, thus increasing reproductive success.

Religion significantly eases the thought of mortality. Existential dread may impede productivity in the absence of religion. From courtrooms to classrooms, the mere prospect of death undermines logic.

Greene theorizes that religion evolved as a strategy for navigating existential dread and with that out of the way, humans could focus on survival instead.

Once that happened, and hunter-gatherers were able to cater to our food, clothing, and shelter, the eyes of humanity turned to greater ideas and pursuits as we will now see.

We never stopped evolving and most definitely never will. But what’s changed is we added creativity somewhere along the way.

Humans have often relied on stories to help them understand the world and drive technological breakthroughs that improve their chances of survival. A creative drive to interact with one's surroundings emerged as well, encouraging art appreciation and creativity.

However, a question remains: Why the creative impulse? What was the need for its creation? How did it originate? And why devote efforts to art rather than survival skills or resource acquisition? After all, all creativity wasn’t giving us the same material benefits.

The underlying concept is that art fosters social bonds and problem-solving abilities.

Because of a dearth of fossil evidence, beliefs concerning the origins of art vary, relying on theories for comprehension.

Some compared art to cheesecake - saying it was developed purely for pleasure - i.e. gratification unconnected to evolutionary reward. An interesting tidbit - the psychologist, Steven Pinker, suggested our evolutionary systems reward behaviors that lead to reproduction by making them more pleasurable to us. This ensured our species thrived. This reproductive feedback loop is disrupted by art - as art despite not being a reproductive activity, leads to pleasure.

Others have a different theory. They say that art was seen as a tool to promote sexual selection - the best artist got the best woman. It also indicated a healthy body and sufficiency of wealth & resources - after all, why’d you have time for arts if you’re living hand-to-mouth?

This theory, however, does not account for women's historical contributions to the arts.

Another widely held concept connects art to survival via social bonds. Art promotes emotional bonds among groups, creating social harmony and community spirit, which is essential for human success and survival.

Lastly, creative expression improves well-being and problem-solving abilities. Emotionally powerful art encounters reveal hidden realities. Peeling away layer after layer, art has the power to help us unearth important aspects of reality that may not be visible to us during our normal chores and moments of thinking. This is suggested to be another cause of the adoption of the arts by humanity.

You had plans to go somewhere? Well, change of plans.

Infinity, the concept of limitless existence, fascinates people from all cultures. However, nothing lasts forever. Everything on Earth, including ourselves and our families, is subject to disintegration as a result of entropy's structural erosion. Entropy disorganizes elements while evolution arranges them. However, these forces do not always align. There is no pre-known period when entropy begins to cause something to disintegrate. Theoretically, as long as a low-entropy system continues to expel any additional entropy it is gaining and stays in low entropy, it can continue to exist. Only after it stops expelling entropy, will it move to a state of higher entropy and breakdown.

The question is whether these laws will continue to exist in the universe's far future. Our estimate assumes that they do. And based on that assumption, we can make some educated guesses about the future of the universe.

The prediction? Our Earth, sun, stars, and planets will all be pulled into black holes at some point.

Around 100 million years after the great bang, the first stars appeared. Given gravity and hydrogen supply, this cycle might last 100 trillion years.

Our sun is predicted to exist for five billion years more until its core implodes, causing a temperature rise and massive expansion. The resultant destruction of nearby planets could leave Earth uninhabitable due to evaporating oceans and molten crust.

A period of 600 million years of stabilization will follow, ending with a second core explosion of the sun, with it becoming a white dwarf star. After billions of years, it will transform into a dark, chilly sphere.

Earth will continue to orbit the sun for a long time, losing energy every time it does so, eventually collapsing and being pulled into the sun. Other planets will follow suit.

Now the death of massive stars creates black holes in the center of every galaxy. These pull matter, becoming so gravitationally stronger in the process, they begin swallowing stars. It is predicted that 10^30 years after the Big Bang, the black hole in our galaxy will swallow everything in our galaxy. Other black holes will swallow everything in the universe 10^38 years after the Big Bang.

Einstein's sophisticated theory of relativity investigates concepts such as black holes, but we won't go into detail here. His hypothesis basically states that items consumed by black holes are lost, their energy adding to the black hole’s entropy. The fate of black holes after they swallow all particles and perhaps develop huge power remains unknown.

Stephen Hawking discovered that black holes produce radiation as they shrink and become hotter. All known black holes are now expanding, but when the temperature of space falls lower than them, they will compress and disappear in around 10^68 years.

But there’s still space to be hopeful! Black holes will swallow everything, but eventually, they too will be gone - and space will continue to change after that, and with that, there's hope that life may re-emerge.

Ever seen the vast dark black space in movies and thought it was empty? Well, turns out it’s not! Space is filled with unseen black energy. In the 1970s, Peter Higgs hypothesized that this energy has remained the same as it's surrounded by barriers on all sides. This boxed energy, called the Higgs field, is common all across the universe. Higgs suggested that if in a super rare event, an electron in this field could break through the barriers from one field to another using a technique of quantum tunneling, it’d alter the laws of the cosmos.

The exact timing is unknown, however, he suggested a change could occur between 10^102 and 10^359 years and lead to a rebirth of the universe.

Finally, life can eventually arise as long as some form of particles exists in the universe. Colliding particles create atoms, which then evolve into more complex structures such as stars and species.

While gradual, this process does leave a glimpse of optimism, however dim.

This universe is filled with a lot of mysteries and wonders. Many of us humans, intrigued by these mysteries, have spent their whole lives looking for the answers. In this quest to get to know everything, humans have learned amazing truths about the universe. Our world is continuously evolving but everything from the start to the end of the universe will be controlled by the same forces - evolution, the mastermind behind creation, and entropy, the relentless architect of decay and ultimate demise.

And even though scientists are still struggling to find the truths about our existence, human resilience is the key that keeps us going. To make sure the human race survives the inevitable universal destruction through entropy, we must continue our quest for getting answers! Because this quest is not just a mere human trait; it's a superpower that fueled our species' triumph. And if universal death is our ultimate reality, we must learn to appreciate and enjoy life.