The last question was first asked in 2008, by Alex Pilafian. Alex was thinking a bit about the first recorded map of london in about 1550; how one of the largest and greatest cities on Earth, just 450 years ago was but a speck on an island. Then with a population of only 75,000 people, and now with a sprawling eight million. In England one can’t even take a train for 5 minutes anywhere without seeing some outcropping of humanity. How does it continue on? What do our most basic needs (not accounting for our adaptibility) dictate?
Someday, this must end. We can achieve nuclear fission, and even harness the power of the sun, but eventually the energy from a system slowly fades, however long it might be, and however large the system may be. London’s eight million will eventually spread to sixteen, and then twenty. Soon london will take up the entire geographic central reigion of england. What drives the cars, powers the computers, and the cellphone towers? Where does all this new energy come from? How is it created?
“Entropy”, Alex thought.. “How can we reverse Entropy..?”
So he did what any human on Earth in 2008 would do:
“Google, how can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?”.
...and Alex knew, with the worlds largest super-server-farm in Malaysia spreading it’s web of fiber-optic data-shooting light cables throughout the known world, churning away at all of humanity’s queries, surely google would know the answer.
The server fell quiet, and as the browser ticked away, Alex grew nervous. Finally Google responded:
“Entropy is a measure of the unavailability of a system’s energy to do
work. Entropy is defined in the second law of thermodynamics and
results from a change of a system to a random molecular state.
In our perception of the laws of thermodynamics we are always taught
that entropy NEVER decreases. Out in the Universe we do not know how
such large systems behave or even if our laws prevail.
Bottom line: I don’t have a clue.“
...and if that wasn’t funny to you, you should read this.
YES!! I can't believe it, but this article already tops the search string on google - NOW when people ask the last question, they get me!
Dude. The Last Question was fucking awesome!