Last time in this infinitely-old universe puzzle, we found that by making a universe of only three kinds of atoms (hydrogen, iron, and uranium) which shifted to one another with fixed chances over the course of time, we’d end up with the same distribution of atoms regardless of what the distribution of hydrogen, iron, and uranium was to start with. That seems like it might require explanation.
(For people who want to join us late without re-reading: I got to wondering what the universe might look like if it just ran on forever, stars fusing lighter elements into heavier ones, heavier elements fissioning into lighter ones. So I looked at a toy model where there were three kinds of atoms, dubbed hydrogen for the lighter elements, iron for the middle, and uranium for the heaviest, and made up some numbers saying how likely hydrogen was to be turned into heavier atoms over the course of a billion years, how likely iron was to be turned into something heavier or lighter, and how likely uranium was to be turned into lighter atoms. And sure enough, if the rates of change stay constant, then the universe goes from any initial distribution of atoms to a single, unchanging-ever-after mix in surprisingly little time, considering it’s got a literal eternity to putter around.)
The first question, it seems, is whether I happened to pick a freak set of numbers for the change of one kind of atom to another. It’d be a stroke of luck, but, these things happen. In my first model, I gave hydrogen a 25 percent chance of turning to iron, and no chance of turning to helium, in a billion years. Let’s change that so any given atom has a 20 percent chance of turning to iron and a 20 percent chance of turning to uranium. Similarly, instead of iron having no chance of turning to hydrogen and a 40 percent chance of turning to uranium, let’s try giving each iron atom a 25 percent chance of becoming hydrogen and a 25 percent chance of becoming uranium. Uranium, first time around, had a 40 percent chance of becoming hydrogen and a 40 percent chance of becoming iron. Let me change that to a 60 percent chance of becoming hydrogen and a 20 percent chance of becoming iron.
With these chances of changing, a universe that starts out purely hydrogen settles on being about 50 percent hydrogen, a little over 28 percent iron, and a little over 21 percent uranium in about ten billion years. If the universe starts out with equal amounts of hydrogen, iron, and uranium, however, it settles over the course of eight billion years to … 50 percent hydrogen, a little over 28 percent iron, and a little over 21 percent uranium. If it starts out with no hydrogen and the rest of matter evenly split between iron and uranium, then over the course of twelve billion years it gets to … 50 percent hydrogen, a litte over 28 percent iron, and a little over 21 percent uranium.
Perhaps the problem is that I’m picking these numbers, and I’m biased towards things that are pretty nice ones — halves and thirds and two-fifths and the like — and maybe that’s causing this state where the universe settles down very quickly and stops changing any. We should at least try that before supposing there’s necessarily something more than coincidence going on here.
So I set the random number generator to produce some element changes which can’t be susceptible to my bias for simple numbers. Give hydrogen a 44.5385 percent chance of staying hydrogen, a 10.4071 percent chance of becoming iron, and a 45.0544 percent chance of becoming uranium. Give iron a 25.2174 percent chance of becoming hydrogen, a 32.0355 percent chance of staying iron, and a 42.7471 percent chance of becoming uranium. Give uranium a 2.9792 percent chance of becoming hydrogen, a 48.9201 percent chance of becoming iron, and a 48.1007 percent chance of staying uranium. (Clearly, by the way, I’ve given up on picking numbers that might reflect some actual if simple version of nucleosynthesis and I’m just picking numbers for numbers’ sake. That’s all right; the question this essay is, are we stuck getting an unchanging yet infinitely old universe?)
And the same thing happens again: after nine billion years a universe starting from pure hydrogen will be about 18.7 percent hydrogen, about 35.7 percent iron, and about 45.6 percent uranium. Starting from no hydrogen, 50 percent iron, and 50 percent uranium, we get to the same distribution in again about nine billion years. A universe beginning with equal amounts hydrogen, iron, and uranium under these rules gets to the same distribution after only seven billion years.
The conclusion is this settling down doesn’t seem to be caused by picking numbers that are too particularly nice-looking or obviously attractive; and the distributions don’t seem to have an obvious link to what the probabilities of changing are. There seems to be something happening here, though admittedly we haven’t proven that rigorously. To spoil a successor article in this thread: there is something here, and it’s a big thing.
(Also, no, we’re not stuck with an unchanging universe, and good on you if you can see ways to keep the universe changing without, like, having the probability of one atom changing to another itself vary in time.)