Did the world actually end in 2012? – The Next Web

Numerous reputable news sites and media personalities have spent the past couple of weeks alleging that the current year is 2022. How can they be so sure?

Here at Neural we believe in science. And the presence of evidence isnt necessarily evidence that were present. Thats why were not willing to concede that its 2022 yet.

What if the world really did end on 21 December 2012? The fact that youre reading this makes it a bit hard to accept, but we think we can make a pretty strong argument.

The first challenge we need to overcome is reality. We could take the philosophical view and point out that all of this could actually be a space turtles dream. Or, perhaps more believably, a computer simulation.

Oxford philosopher Nick Bostroms simulation argument hypothesizes that were either in a simulation now, or people in the future arent capable of creating one.

Per his 2003 paper:

At least one of the following propositions is true:

But thats too easy. If Bostroms been right all along, and were all just digital entities, then none of this really matters anyway. CTRL+ALT+DEL and restart the program, amirite?

The most widely accepted grand theory on our existence is the Big Bang theory. For whatever reason, about 14 billion years ago the universe exploded into existence from a single point.

When we think of an explosion we tend to imagine something out of a Michael Bay film. But the Big Bang was incomprehensibly big. Everything that was ever going to be in the entire universe was contained in the single point that emptied itself out to become the entire universe. Thats a lot of boom.

Scientists believe theyve witnessed quantum echoes of the Big Bang by observing fluctuations in quantum fields.

Per a 2015 research paper by Blasco et al.:

Let us reflect for a second upon the comparison of these two outrageously different timescales: Plank time and the age of the Universe. Intuitively, one would think that any effect imprinted on the response of the detector in the early Universe would most likely have been already washed out, and hence there is little hope in finding any trace of early Universe physics in the response of the particle detector today.

Surprisingly this intuition is wrong.

It turns out that time functions fundamentally differently across the quantum and classical realms. Recent research demonstrates that both quantum gravity and general relativity could function in a paradigm where time itself exists as discrete chunks of spacetime.

In essence, this means you could zoom into the fabric of the universe so far that, like Ant Man in the MCU films, you reached a quantum bedrock made up of individually-measurable units of spacetime.

Physicists are trying to wrap their head around the Big Bang because it represents the only single point in our universes history where the same thing happened to everything at the same time.

Arguably, however, everything is happening to everything all the time. Scientists believe the universe is expanding at an increasing rate as as result of the Big Bang. And that means discrete chunks of spacetime would be either tearing, displacing, or stretching.

If spacetime is malleable and fluctuates depending on the configuration of the cosmic background environment, then that means our perception of time is almost certainly distorted in comparison to the edges and origin point of the universe.

Humans, standing on Earth, witnessing the end of the universe could theoretically see it coming for billions of years before they themselves were destroyed by whatever comes after the universes outward expansion.

Its theoretically possible that every time we gaze up and see the light thats traveled for millions or billions of years, were watching the credits roll at the end of the universe.

But thats still not very satisfying. If were just waiting for a tidal wave of nothingness to envelope us all, then again: theres no point.

And, if theres no point, then lets use Occams Razor to make things as scientifically simple and plausible as possible.

What if were able to make observations despite the fact that we no longer exist? Remember the above line about spacetime being malleable?

If spacetime is malleable and fluctuates depending on the configuration of the cosmic background environment, then that means our perception of time is almost certainly distorted in comparison to the edges and origin point of the universe.

In a universe where time is made up of discrete chunks of malleable spacetime, the area of the universe where we live could be temporally displaced to such a degree that were watching the end of everything wash over us as spectators from the beyond.

Earth and the Sun and our entire galaxy could have been physically displaced (destroyed) by whatevers ended the universe, while the wackiness of quantum physics could allow for the temporal displacement to simultaneously hold us in a sort of observation-friendly suspensionindependent of our own inexistence.

The simplest explanation is that the Big Bang only took up a micro-fraction of a second, but the displacement of every single discrete chunk of spacetime caused entire pockets of existence to erupt and observe, despite the fact that the overall consensus of discrete spacetime chunks would agree that the contents of those pockets dont still exist.

All of this is interesting, but astute readers will notice that none of this explains why were claiming the universe ended in 2012.

Heres what NASA had to say about that:

News flash: the world didnt end on Dec. 21, 2012. Youve probably already figured that out for yourself. Despite reports of an ancient Maya prophecy, a mysterious planet on a collision course with Earth, or a reverse in Earths rotation, were still here.

Interesting. NASA claims the world didnt end but offers only anecdotal evidence. That sounds pretty suspicious.

Once again, at Neural were erring on the side of due diligence and Occams Razor.

Its far easier to come up with a plausible theory on how the universe ended in 2012 than it is to explain what the hells been happening on Earth for the past decade.

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Did the world actually end in 2012? - The Next Web