Do you know what a virtual particle is?
A virtual particle is literally that -- a particle that
has only a virtual existence as a solution to and consequence of the equations
describing quantum mechanics. They are modeled as pairs of particles popping
into existence simultaneously, meeting, annihilating, and vanishing with no net
change to the energy-state of the universe.
Virtual particles do two things: They permit black
holes to evaporate through radiation, and they provide a neat answer to a
question every sapient species has ever asked -- the origin of the universe. You
see, if a virtual, unreal, simulated particle can still produce real tangible
effects and yet accurately be said never to have truly existed at all… Then so can
the universe. If the energy state of the universe will eventually decay to zero
- if it is ’flat’ to use the human cosmological parlance - then it
will have, in a big-picture sense, never existed at all. And any universe you
happen to encounter is nothing more than a temporary
local anomaly.
The point is that all of this is virtual, an
emergent product of an equation that is still being worked through. Eventually,
all of it will be gone and so will we, and nothing will remain.
Spacetime and all its energy and matter will be gone as if they never were, exactly because they never actually were in the first place.
We live, in a mockery of a reality, one
that’s infinitely less real than the worlds we build inside our minds, one with
no meaning, no purpose, no fate and no hope except whatever we can
create for ourselves. All of us are trapped in a cruel game that allows only
defeat.
The only endgame is to live a little longer, and the only winning move is to keep playing.
