If the universe were to collapse, would we talk backwards?

Fred   Sat Feb 14, 2009 10:15 pm GMT
If the universe were to collapse, would we start talking backwards?
Physicist   Sat Feb 14, 2009 10:17 pm GMT
No.... It is completely irrelevant to us the direction in which we are moving. Nothing would change in the slightest. Humans would be long extinct by the time of the Big Crush.
Stephen Hawking   Sun Feb 15, 2009 11:38 am GMT
According to my calculations, if the universe were to collapse, we would start talking out of our arse and farting from our mouth. But wait, isn't this what most of our politicians do right now? Hmm, lemme go check my calculations again.
Damian in Edinburgh   Sun Feb 15, 2009 2:31 pm GMT
Maybe the universe has collapsed already as we increasingly hear a good deal of backwards talk in the media.....from politicans mainly, but also from our representatives in local Government as well, such as this Town Clerk in England somewhere during is speech while opening a new housing development by the magnificent name of the Keir Hardie Eastate, wherever that is...down in England somewhere as I say. Using double speak is more or less the same as backwards speak for all the sense it makes to the long suffering constituents of these guys who are made to pay for electing them in the first place.

Admittedly this recording was made many years ago, and the speaker (a certain Stanley Unwin) has long since picked up his golden harp apparently, so backwards speak must have been with us all the while and it's not a new phenomenon after all....

http://www.stanleyunwin.com/audio.htm
Hawken Stephing   Sun Feb 15, 2009 4:30 pm GMT
Isn't it "universe was to collapse"?
Uriel   Sun Feb 15, 2009 5:12 pm GMT
No, "if .... were" is correct; the conditional takes on an unusual tense. Some people will say "if .... was", though.
boyntonville bumpkin   Sun Feb 15, 2009 9:30 pm GMT
<<If the universe were to collapse, would we start talking backwards? >>

We'd also hear backwards, so nobody would appear to be talking backwards :)
Chickin Lickin   Wed Feb 18, 2009 7:39 pm GMT
OMG the universe is falling in???!!!
general custer   Wed Feb 18, 2009 10:15 pm GMT
No sweat, hop into a wormhole and bang, you're in another universe.
Guest   Wed Feb 18, 2009 10:25 pm GMT
The universe is unlikely to collapse. It's more likely to go through a big freeze several trillions of years from now.
Crazy Horse   Wed Feb 18, 2009 10:28 pm GMT
So, we would be not talking but shivering.
Lazar   Wed Feb 18, 2009 10:38 pm GMT
As Guest notes, the idea of a "Big Crunch" at the end of the universe has generally been rejected in favor of some kind of endless expansion and heat death.
steadystater   Thu Feb 19, 2009 1:38 am GMT
<<As Guest notes, the idea of a "Big Crunch" at the end of the universe has generally been rejected in favor of some kind of endless expansion and heat death. >>

I'd take any predictions like this with a grain of salt. When I was in school (decades ago) the "steady state" and "big bang" theories were both viable competitors. Fourty years from now, the "Big Bang" theory may well be losing out to something new.
Uriel   Thu Feb 19, 2009 3:26 am GMT
Well, now that dark matter and dark energy are putting the cosmological constant back into the equation, it's just now occurring to us how little we really know. Makes it more fun!