The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)

by Katie Mack

Carl Sagan’s larger statement still stands, and to an even greater degree: “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”

It was just as weird as if you were throwing a ball up into the air and it slowed down a bit and then suddenly shot off into space for no reason. Exactly that weird except for the ENTIRE UNIVERSE.

This is called Poincaré recurrence. If you have an infinite amount of time to work with, any state the system can be in is a state it WILL be in again,

“I think a lot of people at some level—again, either explicitly or implicitly—will do science or art or something because of the sense that you do get to transcend something. You touch something eternal. That word, eternal: very important.

We’re specks of dust upon a speck of dust adrift in a giant cosmic ocean.