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Comment by irrational | Hacker News Reader

> the physical parameters or our world — continents and oceans, mountains and lakes — appear fixed only because our own lives are so infinitesimally short, measured against geological eras.

And the geological eras are over in a nanosecond in comparison to the lifetime of the universe. It makes me wonder if the lifetime of the universe is over in a nanosecond in comparison to whatever the universe is embedded within (this is assuming the multi-universe theory is correct).

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bit of quibble, but a geological era, as a technical term, describes a duration on the order of 100MYA, which is nearly 1/100th of the age of the universe, making 'nanosecond' a bit of an exaggeration. even if we consider periods on the order of 10MYA (how long ago the titular lake disappeared), that's still on the order of 100000x a human lifespan, versus 1/1000th the age of the universe.

anyway, i bring this up mostly because, while it's widely appreciated that spatially speaking earth exists an a scale utterly insignificant compared to astronomical distances, from a temporal perspective the age of the earth (and the duration of life on earth) are actually quite comparable to that of the universe

A microsecond of 1e8 or 1e9 year nanoseconds, is... a night sky without galaxies (observable universe is a coalesced Local Group)? A millisecond, a sky of stellar remnants? A second... black holes and ejected remnants?

The heat death of the universe is in 10, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 years. 100,000,000 years is not 1/100th of the lifetime of the universe.

I might be misunderstanding, but could OP mean ‘age’ and you mean ‘portion of lifespan’?

I don't think that "lifetime of the universe" is well-defined. The universe would still exist after the heat death.

High on mushrooms as a teenager I used to flick my lighter and imagine a whole universe spinning up, stars and planets forming, life evolving and lives being lives, decline and eventual heat death, all in that quick spark.

Reminded me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Inside_a_Pillow

There's a science fiction story wherein our protagonist's experiment goes awry and he starts shrinking without end. After disappearing from our world, he soon reappears in the sky over one of the Great Lakes, and lands in it, only to continue shrinking.

Given the infinite dimensions of the universe, I’d say your assumption is just as valid as any other argument.

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