"What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!” Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?.. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal? "
-Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
The Physics:
- The matter in the universe is accelerating away from the origin of the universe’s creation at an exponential rate.
- When matter reaches the speed of light, it is converted into energy (or light itself) and ceases to be matter.
- Since matter is accelerating exponentially, it will eventually reach the speed of light and convert into light itself.
Relativity Variant:
4a. Since all light moves at the same velocity in a vacuum (Einstein’s theory of relativity), the light in the universe would have no reference point within the universe to compare its position to after all matter has converted into light. It would be a super-posed 0-dimensional point of singularity.
5a. From this 0-dimensional point of singularity, the creation of a subsequent universe emerges; another “Big Bang”.
Dark Energy Variant:
4b. Euclidean space is maintained by dark energy, and dark energy is a residue that matter leaves behind after the expenditure of energy.
5b. After all the matter in the universe has converted to energy, the dark energy (which is really just quanta of energy that is too minuscule to interact with matter other than through gravity) would no longer be maintained. Hence, Euclidean space would no longer exist, and the universe would be a 0-dimensional point of singularity.
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From this 0-dimensional point of singularity, the creation of a subsequent universe emerges; another “Big Bang”. This is because the 0-dimensional point is unstable (assuming that different photons were traveling in different directions at the moment that the last particle of matter converted into energy).
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Another “big bang” results, and the creation of a new universe.
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Existence is stuck in an infinite oscillation where a new universe is created after the destruction of a previous universe.
The Philosophy:
Assuming that there is “something” in existence right now, then there can never be “nothing” in existence, but there must always be “something”. Even if the “something” was destroyed, the residue of its destruction would still be “something”.
Since time is infinite, then a particular arrangement of the universe has the probability of occurring more than once. Eventually (after a tremendously long time), a state of the universe that has already occurred will occur again. Since time is infinite, it is not a problem of how long it takes for this replica to occur. However minuscule the probabilities of of this “replica universe” occurring are, the very fact that it has a probability of occurring means that it will occur eventually, given that time is infinite.
Not only will this “replica universe” occur, it will occur an infinite number of times.
Indeed, all possible scenarios of all possible universes will occur an infinite number of times.
So you will have to live this life again, and again an infinite number of times with nothing changed or different. You might speculate that this implies that there will “eventually occur” a universe where you won the lottery last night or some other fortunate turn of affairs - but these universes, you will never experience, because on some fundamental level, that “you” who won the lottery last night is somehow different from the “you” that you are right now.
So you will be stuck living the same exact life repeatedly, over and over again. Every choice you make right now is not just for right now, the choice is being made for all eternity.