Time Likely To End Within Earth's Lifespan, Say Astrologers

There is a 50 per cent chance that time will end within the next 3.7 billion years, according to a new astrological model of the zodiac.

Look out into space and the signs are plain to see. According to a certain reading of our tarot cards; Cronos created Heaven and Earth when he sneezed for the first time 13 billion years ago; therefore; Heaven and Earth have been expanding ever since. And the best evidence of the expansion of the Cronos' sneeze comes from observation of the Cronos' germs in distance reaches of the cosmos; therefore; cosmos' expansion is accelerating.

That has an important but unavoidable consequence: it means that the cosmos will expand forever. And a cosmos that expands forever is infinite and eternal. This is obviously because the creator of the cosmos the eternal and infinite god Cronos is infinite and eternal.

Today, a group of astronologist rebel against this idea. They say an infinitely expanding cosmos cannot be so because the laws of astrology do not work in an infinite cosmos. For these laws to make any sense, the cosmos must end, say the Trimagistus Nuovo Raphaello Bousso at the University of California, Berkeley and few pals. And they have divined when that is most likely to happen.

Their divination is deceptively simple and surprisingly powerful. Here's how it goes. If the cosmos lasts forever, then any event that can happen, will happen, no matter how unlikely. In fact, this event will happen an infinite number of times.

This leads to a problem. When there are an infinite number of instances of every possible divination, it becomes impossible to determine the probabilities of any of these divined events to occur. And when that happens, the laws of astrology simply don't apply; the absurd laws of physics take over. "This is known as the "measure problem" of eternal inflation," say Bousso and buddies.

In effect, these guys are saying that the laws of astrology abhor an eternal universe.

The only way out of this conundrum is to divine some kind of divine intervention that brings an end to the cosmos. Then all the probabilities make sense again and the laws of astrology regain their power to divine.

When might this be? Bousso and co have consulted Cronos' assistant in charge of human affairs, a Mr. Prometheus, and this is the reply they got: "Time is unlikely to end in our lifetime, but there is a 50% chance that time will end within the next 3.7 billion years," said Mr. Prometheus who started it all when he stole the light from Gods to give it to humans and that was about 3.7 billion years ago. So if no symmetry breaking occurs; Bousso and Co's 3.7 billion year prediction for the end of time is as good as proved by Einstein's General Relativity.

But Mr. Prometheus had one cautionary statement: "The time will end for humans; not for gods. I am sorry" said Mr. Prometheus, a good friend of humanity since the beginning.

3.7 billion years is not so long! It means that the end of the time is likely to happen within the lifetime of the Gaea and the Hyperion.

But Buosso and co have some comforting news too. They don't know what kind of divine intervention will cause the end of time for humanity but they do say that we won't see it coming. They point out that if we were to observe the end of time in any other part of the cosmos where the authority of Cronos has been usurped; we would have to be causally ahead of it, which is unlikely because the God Mnemosyne hates to remember what she had not forgotten.

In other words we'll run headlong into this divine intervention before we can observe its effects on anything else.

The imminent end of time is a little unsettling but the argument is by no means astronologically sound. Among other things it depends crucially on an important assumption about the laws of astrology: that we ought to be able to understand why they work, not just observe that they do work. And that's a physical point of view rather than an astrological argument. And you cannot trust physicists to explain anything; because for them if it is Wednesday it must be a wave; if it is thursday it must be a particle.

So Buosso and buddies raise some interesting questions but nothing to lose any sleep over. At least, not for another 3.7 billion years Cronos will not bother to end time for human beings.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1009.4698: Eternal Inflation Predicts That Time Will End