{"id":634,"date":"2015-08-13T15:08:58","date_gmt":"2015-08-13T06:08:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/?p=634"},"modified":"2017-07-06T19:42:04","modified_gmt":"2017-07-06T10:42:04","slug":"the-impending-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/the-impending-darkness\/","title":{"rendered":"The Impending Darkness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hard not to be gloomy these days. Just when you think there\u2019s a chance, a glimmer, it\u2019s gone. Like everything else.
\n\"sadkurtz\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It turns out that not only is the universe going to die a slow cooling death, but we\u2019re not even in an interesting time. On the other hand, the 1980s under the very real Cold War threat and a resurgent Reagan\u2019s America was the most optimistic time I have ever had in my life. The particles were symmetrical, and the Omega point was widely presumed to be a smidge better than one. The internet of cat pictures was just an embryo.<\/p>\n

Yes, the universe was going to re-invent itself, and so would we. Mysteries would be solved in an orderly fashion and the ridiculous dark matter\/energy whatnot was just as unlikely or promising a candidate as string theory (which came with neat-o doodles of an intuitive mapping between energy and matter) or S-matrix theory, whatever that was.<\/p>\n

Along the way we had MOND and other heresies to entertain and execute, and come to think of it, maybe dark whatnot was just a rotation curve problem back then. I was hardly on top of things then, being young and busy. Well, young.<\/p>\n

George Herbert Walker Bush truly despised Reagan (albeit in a professional, polite fashion \u2014 they were grown-ups, with jobs to do) and flat-out hated Reaganism. Recall that when he raised taxes after pledging No New Taxes, he did so as a last-ditch maneuver to avoid spending cuts. This cake was baked a long time ago.<\/p>\n

And as much as I always resisted dark matter (and dark energy, what the heck) as just so much heretical fiddling with C (the other C, the one Einstein regretted), figuring that there must be a neat answer that balances somewhere, the fact is there isn\u2019t. Scientists, busy creatures that they are, have been filling in gaps and pretty much have dark matter\/energy cornered right where they want it<\/a>. That is, it has us surrounded, and will kill us all. Nice going, guys.<\/p>\n

\"bunkercat\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There was a moment in July or August of 1991 when I realized that I was looking at the last perfect day. I pulled my 1967 Mustang off the highway in western Tennessee\u00a0and leaned against the quarter panel for a smoke and a real meta-moment, gazing down Interstate Forty into the sunset. I contemplated how strange it was to realize at the time that in the future, we would not be allowed to just drive anywhere we want, with no notice, with no tracking, with little expense and not a care in the world. White T-shirt, good haircut, blue jeans and jungle boots \u2014 everything I owned was in the car or slung across my skinny carcass.<\/p>\n

So trust me when I say that it turns out this actually is<\/em> an interesting time. Nevermind the enlightenment, the age of flight, the age of spaceflight, and all of that faded glory. Plato? Aristotle? Socrates? Morons!<\/em><\/p>\n

Twenty years ago, it seemed the universe had a chance. Now we know it isn\u2019t so. The Universe is being re-inflated beyond its critical point, accelerated, what-have-you, but it\u2019s not going to end well. It\u2019s not even going to end. It\u2019s just the impending darkness.<\/p>\n

\r\n
\r\n \r\n <\/i>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/span>\r\n<\/div>
\r\n \r\n <\/i>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/span>\r\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hard not to be gloomy these days. Just when you think there\u2019s a chance, a glimmer, it\u2019s gone. Like everything else.
\"sadkurtz\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It turns out that not only is the universe going to die a slow cooling death, but we\u2019re not even in an interesting time. On the other hand, the 1980s under the very real Cold War threat and a resurgent Reagan\u2019s America was the most optimistic time I have ever had in my life. The particles were symmetrical, and the Omega point was widely presumed to be a smidge better than one. The internet of cat pictures was … Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":639,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions\/639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}