What is the scariest scientific concept?

[Molydood]

GRBs. I don't like threats for which there is no possible defense.

Spaghettification - what a way to go!

Global Climate Change - perhaps the greatest challenge ever faced by civilization.



Those would be the sorts of things that motivated me to get a physics degree. "Scary" is not the word that comes to mind.

Looks like it's just me that has issues with the size of space or duration of 'time'...

As a side note, are you going to have a 'Happy 10,000 Posts' party?

 

[Galteeth]

It always seems weird to me when I hear people say things like "cosmology freaks me out" or "I don't like to think about those things". To me, the scarier thing would be if humans only had the capacity to think about proximate trivial things. It would be such a loss.

A note on the dying thing, while a priori non-existence seems like the most likely outcome, it doesn't seem that likely to me from a philosophical perspective. Think of the anthropic principle. We can't perceive non-existence. If there is any outcome to the universe besides a single universe that "ends" (without the possibility for the creation of a new universe) then it would seem eventually "we" would reform at some point. And the single ending universe scenario seems unlikely, since the universe did form from "nothing."


Also, I find the concept of torque scary.

 

[baiboo]

if the ozone layer will be broke and the Earth will be hit by the sun, and we all be burn from that heat coming from the sun...
this really scares me.. so now, we still have time to preserve and save our mother earth.. let's all be aware of this..!

[spam link deleted]

 

[Vincit]

Reverse Universe.

Among the physical laws it is a general characteristic that there is reversibility in time; that is, should the whole universe trace back the various positions that bodies in it have passed through in a given interval of time, but in the reverse order to that in which these positions actually occurred, then the universe, in this imaginary case, would still obey the same laws.

Imagine it; complete craziness. The universe would begin to shrink, resulting in the reversal of time; the reversal of ENTROPY. This is incredible, but quite hard to swallow.

Don't worry though, this will probably happen in more than a trillion years.

 

[DanP]

Imagine it; complete craziness. The universe would begin to shrink, resulting in the reversal of time; the reversal of ENTROPY. This is incredible, but quite hard to swallow.

Fiat lux ?

 

[Loren Booda]

Nothing

 

[lubuntu]

The fact that everything I ever know or could ever know will amount not not more than 1 part in trillions and trillions in both the time and space dimensions. That so much of this vast universe is censored from us.

 

[PhaseShifter]

Actually, the "atoms" were my retinal rods firing from photons in the near-dark, the one that chased me during my early years might be described as a very threatening "black hole" (or was derived from a stay in a cabin with scary knotholes) and the eventual change of its image into insect scat (while dreaming, now under control in my hand, yuck, but just that of an insect) made it more ridiculous than dangerous.

Reminds me of when I was 3-5 years old and noticed "faces" in wood paneling. It always felt like someone was watching me in those rooms.

Isn't the holocaust a direct evidence of such a dark nature of humans.? Not just the holocaust, there were several million wars before the WWII and in each of them not just the soldiers but almost equal number of innocent civilians were also murdered and raped. All these rapes and murders were committed by the apparently normal human beings who were ploughing the fields or making jewels before a particular war started.

What's scary? The idea that maybe we're all hardwired with this type of behavior as a solution to the "too many people, not enough resources" problem.