Huh? I didnāt know www.bbc.com was region-locked from the UKā¦
Itās AndroMilk, dammit! Not weak-ass, milquetoast āMilkomeda,ā ugh.
Seems pretty ridiculous. Oh well, no infographic for me.
The forum is going to resize the picture, but hopefully you can either right-click and open them in another window to see the full-size or use the .co.uk link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc.com/future/bespoke/20140107-far-future/assets/images/far-future-timeline (dot) png
I feel insignificant, as usual.
But on a grander scale, at least.
Whenās the singularity? When do we convert the solar system into a Matryoshka Brain?
Why donāt people ever consult a linguist before they make linguistic claims? Itās absurd to say that no single word will survive in 1000 years. If we judge based on our current data, many words will survive, just as āquid pro quo,ā survives. And if you allow for spelling variations (which are pretty trivial in a linguistic sense), then words from Old English are still in common usage a thousand years later.
Now, if you said āno single language will survive,ā you might be on slightly firmer ground, although Iāll still scoff. If you define āsurviveā as ānot undergo change,ā then no single language will survive the night.
I know most people donāt realize there actually is a science of linguistics. Still. A claim like that casts into doubt a lot of the rest of it, for me, because I know Iām not equipped to find similar errors in the biology or cosmology bits.
Dead languages donāt undergo changes. Living languages do.
People canāt even predict what theyāll do over the weekendā¦
Perfect time and place for my all-time favorite Wikipedia page, Timeline of the far future, with mind-blowers such as the year 10ā10ā50 (10 to the power of 10 to the power of 50):
Estimated time for a Boltzmann Brain to appear in the vacuum via a spontaneous entropy decrease.
Well thatās comfortingā¦
extinction of humans in 5 million years
pretty optimistic.
Wait! No heat death of the universe? It feels kinda lackingā¦
Iām convinced that there must be a better name for ours than āthe milky wayā (or equivalents in other indo-european languages). Thatās not a name, itās just a (pretty inadequate plesioreligious) description. It deserves a better name. Whereās the IAU on this?
How about āTrevorā?
Thank you for reposting that.
āEarthā is a pretty crap name too
āThat is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may dieā
I know itās just the power of suggestion, but now all my Y-chromosomes feel weird and crumbly.
