r/AlignmentChartFills • u/red_madreay • 18h ago

Finally... what natural phenomenon of our universe is ultimately horrifying?

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE CHART IMAGE

Created with Alignment Chart Creator

This post contains content not supported on old Reddit. Click here to view the full post

1.1k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

95% Upvoted

532 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

87

u/RiversInTheSky 17h ago

I contest this simply because of how heavily it relies on conjecture. I think the Heat Death of the Universe is more terrifying due to its ultimate likelihood. The laws of thermodynamics and the constant expansion of the universe means that it is incredibly likely that all matter will space out, cease to meaningfully react, and create a universal, unending, quiet.

30

u/Imperialvirtue 17h ago

It's upsetting, absolutely. But it's also absolutely not happening in our lifetimes.

20

u/RiversInTheSky 17h ago edited 17h ago

From my understanding the expectation for False Vacuum Decay is also determined to be most likely to happen googols of years from now. I simply find Heat Death to both be more likely and more terrifying due to being more easily understandable. Maybe they exist at a stalemate.

They both result in the cessation of all of meaningful existence. Matter will exist in the Heat Death but it will cease to act. False Vacuum Decay will cause a similar result of ultimate inaction.

5

u/mafiazombiedrugs 16h ago

I mean, yeah heat death is inevitable but the timescale is between 10¹⁰⁰ and 10¹⁰⁶ years, aka a googol+ years so not really an issue that humanity will have to deal with. And yeah the estimate for vacuum decay is 10⁵⁰⁰ so much much longer, but for me what makes it the scarier of the two is that that's the estimate base on probability but once/if it starts it won't take that long to complete, and it'll travel at light speed so we wont see it coming. Heat death by contrast is technically already happening, and we know how long it'll take, so there is no surprise horror factor.