[Writing] Story of the Heat Death

[SpaceEagle]

So um hello guys. Some of you may know me by working in the GEP: Reborn that has been on an indefinite halt for many months now.
I am working on a novel about the Heat Death of the Universe.

I call it Endmark: The Heat Death.

So I have no outline where this is from, and this is just an idea I got after listening the Gravity soundtrack "Shenzhou".

So humankind has lived for 1E0990 years (as Wikipedia says Heat Death will be on 1E1000) 90 years are left. (Or my maths about years were wrong?) Humankind has now the power to create black holes, feed them to keep from evaporating and something I had in mind , the "Laser-Krypton-Argon-Xenon-Antimatter" drive that can propell ships millions of LY in seconds (HARD SCI-FI)

There will be colonies orbiting above supermassive black hole clusters (Probably got this idea after playing a skirmish game above The Maw in Star Wars Empire at War) and there will be characters which will try to run away in circles with a LKAXA-drive from the (HARD NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE) dying, imploding universe.

That is all I can say for this writing project, probably will continue to write it while being bored in the classroom :lol: . So far the progress I'm still on Chapter I, which will cover what will happen before years reach 1E0990.

, SpaceEagle

 

[jedidia]

1E0990 years (as Wikipedia says Heat Death will be on 1E1000) 90 years are left. (Or my maths about years were wrong?)

a) this prediction isn't to be expected more precise than give or take a few hundred billion years.

b) The difference between 1E990 and 1E1000 isn't 90 years, it's 1E10 years... i.e. 10 billion!

and there will be characters which will try to run away in circles with a LKAXA-drive from the (HARD NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE) dying, imploding universe.

You don't quite seem to grasp what the heat death is... it isn't a cataclysmic event. It's the universe dying of old age. It's more lights going out in the sky than new ones are created, about all energy distributing equally over the endless space. It's a process that is happening right now, and as the aging process, it will only get more and more apparent, but not really more and more catastrophic over time.

What it would look like in the last stages would effectively be stars becoming rarer and rarer, until they stop to form at all, and the last ones die out. From there on out it is basically an infinite time during which the energy distributes more and more equally across the universe.

For a race a few thousand billion years old with the capability of forming stellar objects, it is debatable whether this is a threat. Theoretically speaking, it should not be possible to generate energy without expending more energy than they put into it, so eventually they will simply run out of means to get the "stove" going... on the other hand, there's really no telling what kind of capabilities they would have, so they might be able to form themselves a bubble of energy that will survive the heat death indefinitely.

Even if we stick to the hard laws of thermodinamics, with some preparation they should easily be able to come up with a plan to preserve enough energy in a local bubble to last another few thousand billion years. A novel about that could be interesting, but it's more a novel about Gods trying to do reality one better for as long as possible than anything even remotely resembling a story about humans living through a catastrophic event.

 

[Ravenous]

You may be interested to know Asimov did a short story about the heat death of the entire universe, too. "The last question". Really good, worth a read.

Red dwarf stars last a long time, so maybe people will be rounding up all the remaining hydrogen and helium and putting it into small dwarfs...

 

[SpaceEagle]

a) this prediction isn't to be expected more precise than give or take a few hundred billion years.

b) The difference between 1E990 and 1E1000 isn't 90 years, it's 1E10 years... i.e. 10 billion!



You don't quite seem to grasp what the heat death is... it isn't a cataclysmic event. It's the universe dying of old age. It's more lights going out in the sky than new ones are created, about all energy distributing equally over the endless space. It's a process that is happening right now, and as the aging process, it will only get more and more apparent, but not really more and more catastrophic over time.

What it would look like in the last stages would effectively be stars becoming rarer and rarer, until they stop to form at all, and the last ones die out. From there on out it is basically an infinite time during which the energy distributes more and more equally across the universe.

For a race a few thousand billion years old with the capability of forming stellar objects, it is debatable whether this is a threat. Theoretically speaking, it should not be possible to generate energy without expending more energy than they put into it, so eventually they will simply run out of means to get the "stove" going... on the other hand, there's really no telling what kind of capabilities they would have, so they might be able to form themselves a bubble of energy that will survive the heat death indefinitely.

Even if we stick to the hard laws of thermodinamics, with some preparation they should easily be able to come up with a plan to preserve enough energy in a local bubble to last another few thousand billion years. A novel about that could be interesting, but it's more a novel about Gods trying to do reality one better for as long as possible than anything even remotely resembling a story about humans living through a catastrophic event.

Noted!

So what will be the year before the Heat Death? As this novel is targeting for the start of the plot 5 years before the heat death.

, SpaceEagle

 

[kamaz]

That's not how it works.

The idea is that all energy production activity ceases (stars burn out) and the Universe starts cooling down towards absolute zero. On the other hand however, the universe will need an infinitely long time to cool down to absolute zero (think 1/exp(t)), so you cannot say "10 years before heat death" any more than you can say "stop counting at infinity minus 10". You will simply never get to the point.

Another practical problem is that, as stars are burning out and the universe is cooling down, you have less and less energy to work with. So your story would have to become slower and sloower and slooower and sloooower with each chapter... Master Asimov's take on the problem.

If you need some dramatic event to quickly end the universe, then I suggest taking a look at the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip"]Big Rip[/ame].

 

[RisingFury]

Noted!

So what will be the year before the Heat Death? As this novel is targeting for the start of the plot 5 years before the heat death.

, SpaceEagle

What day is summer?

Summer comes when your area gradually warms up, not something that happens in a day.

There's no one year when the universe will just die. It'll be dying for a longer time than it's lived so far.

 

[SpaceEagle]

I added a poll. Please vote. thx

Also I think I'm going for the Big Crunch scenario because:

(HARD NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE) dying, imploding universe.

So I'm aiming for the Big Crunch to happen to what year the Heat Death (1E1000) will happen, sorta like a mix.

, SpaceEagle

 

[RisingFury]

You have no idea what to write, what to write about or how to even start. How far do you really think this novel of yours will go?

 

[orbitingpluto]

I know little of consequence in the cosmological sphere(so I ought not stick my nose there), but I do know there are varying definitions for hard science fiction, one common one being science fiction that strives to be near-to-completely accurate about it's science content; that would make it somewhere between your 50-50 and 100% options, and intermediately causes me to question what exactly you mean about "hard science fiction" if it isn't even 50% scientifically accurate.

Since the poll as it is now lacks meaningful, defined choices, perhaps you should redo it with a more thought out scale; TvTropes has a Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness you can use as a basis, or at least a springboard for a scale of your own.

 

[Aeadar]

I think that I have agree with RisingFury here.
Your desire is to write a novel. Understood.
Before you begin writing, you must first complete an outline.
Before you can start an outline, you need a dramatic storyline.
Before you can come up with a storyline, you must be able to set it in a believable environment.
And in order to do that, you need far more hard, scientific knowledge and understanding than you currently have.
Keep learning, keep reading, keep story ideas as far as possible from video games...and write.
Even before anything else, write. Don't worry about wording, spelling, pronuciation. All of that can be edited.
Just do yourself a favor and keep your writing private until you're ready, because you will, at some point, as you learn more about writing and get more science into your head, look back on what you have written and cringe.
Good Luck.

 

[kamaz]

So I'm aiming for the Big Crunch to happen to what year the Heat Death (1E1000) will happen, sorta like a mix.

Another misconception.

Big Crunch is basically expansion in reverse. Since the Universe is currently expanding and nothing dramatic happens, the crunch phase would be equally boring. Unless very near the end, but at this point the universe would be too hot to support life anyway.

BTW, Poul Anderson did a plot involving The Big Crunch in Tau Zero, but then he had a rather elaborate plot device allowing the protagonists to survive and witness it.

---------- Post added at 09:31 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:24 AM ----------

Before you can start an outline, you need a dramatic storyline.

That largely depends if the story is driven by sci-fi elements, or you are just doing a standard storyline with sci-fi decorations.

2001 was the former, BSG was the latter.

 

[jedidia]

So what will be the year before the Heat Death?

As already mentioned, that cannot really be said. If your question is "what will be the year before 1e1000", then the answer would be 1e1000 - 1. I'm not kidding you, that's the easiest way to write it. You use exponential notation to write big numbers on a small space, sacrificing precision along the way. Writing a number with exponential notation to the accuracy of one unit removes the purpose of the notation.

To demonstrate, one year before the year 1e3 would be the year 999, or the year 0.999e3 in exponential notation. You'll notice that the exponential notation now consists of more digits than writing it the normal way.

So if you want to go with one year precision, you'll have no choice but write down the number 9 one thousand times. Or you just call it one year before 1E1000. Whichever is more convienient

 

[NukeET]

You may be interested to know Asimov did a short story about the heat death of the entire universe, too. "The last question". Really good, worth a read.

INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER

 

[SpaceEagle]

Now halfway through Chapter I: Introduction.
Big Crunch will occur during the Heat Death time.
But the name will still be "Endmark: The Heat Death" as I will encorporate (mix) parts of the Heat Death and Big Crunch together (50-50 mix sci - sci-fi)

, SpaceEagle

 

[C3PO]

As already mentioned, that cannot really be said. If your question is "what will be the year before 1e1000", then the answer would be 1e1000 - 1. I'm not kidding you, that's the easiest way to write it. You use exponential notation to write big numbers on a small space, sacrificing precision along the way. Writing a number with exponential notation to the accuracy of one unit removes the purpose of the notation.

To demonstrate how huge that number really is, the size of a hydrogen atom vs the universe is IIRC 1:1E287 (ballpark figure. I didn't look it up)

 

[Quick_Nick]

To demonstrate how huge that number really is, the size of a hydrogen atom vs the universe is IIRC 1:1E287 (ballpark figure. I didn't look it up)

More like 1E37 if looking at the observable universe and Bohr radius of hydrogen.

 

[Izack]

An interesting read if you're looking at such timescales:

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future"]Timeline of the Far Future[/ame].

At this point you won't be writing about characters (unless time travel happens), or even civilisations. Just gods trying to undo entropy.

 

[SpaceEagle]

Okay, you must see me lurking around in the KSP forums as flamerboy67664, so:

1. I have gained support from our school library, provided I do not transfer to another school when I become 9th grade (3rd Year here in Philippines) this June (PH School Year is June-March).

2. I am now writing the ending of Chapter I. After everything is neat and nitpicked by Library staff, I will post it here in the OF Forums.

And that's the news today.

, flamerboy67664/SpaceEagle.

 

[Nikogori]

Have you ever read the short story called "Exhalation" by Ted Chiang? It is definitely one of the best sci-fi stories I've ever read. http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/Exhalation%20-%20Ted%20Chiang.html