If we hit the rewind button on the universe for 5 billion years...?

Question

Let's say we went back in time to the beginning of the universe and everything is created in exactly the same way. Then the Earth is formed and it revolves around the sun in the same way, but now everything is randomized. Would the world be exactly the same as it is now? That is to say that is it by some sort of destiny that we are here or rather by random chance of one in a billion odds?

More specifically, would all life require DNA to reproduce? Would the same human inventions be invented at the same time? Would computers use a non-binary system? The possibilities are endless, or are they?

Answer 1

Man himself is a creation of nature by evolution, which has taken hundreds of millions of years to get transformed from one life form to another by change of food intake and the lifestyle to suit the survival! Nothing in nature is reversible, under the evolutionary cycle for organic life forms! We cannot go back to yesterday and it is just next to impossible! When the irreversibility of natural processes are inherently a constant factor of all evolution including the matter and energy pervading all over the Universe, we could only sense the possibility of exixtence of other life forms in various planetary systems in our galaxy and elsewhere where all suitable conditions of life forms to emerge and grow under evoultion does exist!

We have the science of all life forms on earth to inform us in great details about the genetics, the bulding blocks of life and its development with ability to survive under defined earthly conditions! Based on the known science of all living and non living matter on earth, which is the basis, the foundation, for our research to know the science of future, we have the set standards to prescribe the basic and essential conditions for the existence of life forms in other areas of the Universe! However, our knowledge being much limited to the Earth scale, we have no way to know and gauge the possibilities as may be existing in the nature for any other way of evolution with different genetic possibilities for evolution of species under altogether different living and climatic conditions than our Earth!

But by the principle of cetainity, we could sense and say firmly the limitless possibilities of higher order species in existence with highest intelligence, may be one or ten or even a hundred million years ahead of us! If at all they are there in the universe elsewhere, we are most likely to meet them at the shortest time that could be possiblly be confirmed in the smallest astronomical scale as just a few millions years from now!

No doubt, the DNA in life forms, the human inventions till date and the non-biinary functional super computing machines are all could still be a possibility, if at all we get to know the science of existence of such things as possible to exist to understand and comprehend for knowledge!

One way the question is fully absurd, since the modern theories of big bang and the continous creativity and the unlimited expansion of space and matter are all still to be probed and to be understood more close to the science of it, your rewinding to the original "Primiroidal Universal Egg", before to big bang could just be an assumption and in no way could be close to the reality of what existed perhaps twenty billions years ago! So also is your assumptions of all that events that followed thereafter, so fictious as imagined and told and even essyed by Issac Asimov!

Nice question - made me think so much to say this much!

Answer 2

If you believe that the earth is 5 billion years old, and that it was created by a random explosion, then I have no idea.

But it seems that no one wants to listen to some very compelling research. Many scientists have found evidence that the earth, in fact, is not 5 billion years old.
By what they have found, even giving slack to the other scientists, is that the earth could not possibly be more than 62 million years old, and that is still pushing it. They believe that our earth is only a few thousand years old.

The complexity of this universe just could not have happened randomly. Do you not see the intricate systems of our bodies? Of the earth's cycles? Of our brain? We're not an accident. I think it's funny that people actually believe we could have exploded to be this complex. There is so much evidence, and plain common sense, that shows that the earth is becoming less and less complex, not evolving into something greater. Things wear down over time, they do not decide to become a more complex organism. It simply doesn't make sense.

Keeping these things in mind, the earth a few thousand years ago would be very similar to how it is now. Not randomized, but harmonized. I believe that everything happens for a reason. People could choose to do different things the second time around, changing things about the world today. But it would be a part of God's plan and under His guiding hand. For the most part, I think the world would be very similar.

Answer 3

Be careful with that button there! Because, the first thing to be cancelled out of existence in a grand reversal would be your act of pressing that button, as no sooner would you press the reverse button than you already would have started un-pressing it; this is a frustratingly simple idea, but you could get locked into a moment of indecision. Therefore, you could do with a batter apparatus for the purpose of your experiment, just as efficient as your button is but would not involved pressing, or doing anything that could later on be reversed. Why not just try to stay still and sit quietly in contemplation to check if this would slow the time down a little, and then you could go for the actual reversal process. J

In your question you seek a conceptual symmetry by making things passes the entire length of an hourglass, and then back just to check and see if the sand would come with the same grains arranged into exactly the same, or somewhat similar order. But the actual matter of the question is far too deeply probing into the reality of things that it is possible to meditate upon the subject.

You see that point is that when everything is scramble absolutely to reform, reformulate or rearrange into whatever new order may evolve, the possibilities are wild which can also be wonderful. We see that things might not change at all, or they might change altogether, but the third possibility that they might change and stay the same are all at once in most intriguing to the mind. The very thought of all things changing and yet remaining the same is mind boggling but crucial in understanding the question.

It would be like replacing one apple with another – two apples are not the one and the same and yet they are similar to one another and it would not make any difference at all to the condition of the overall situation. We all see people replacing other people in offices, in buses and trains, all things in this world change this forms, functions and characteristics in time. And this might also be the fact in your question. It is possible that if the universal processes are restarted nothing of which we have today might find a second chance to exist. For instance, there might be similar people, but none of the ones who are here now.

This thought I find intriguing in my mind because I cannot think of the limit to which similarities could be different, or differences could be similar to each other. Could it be, for instance, possible for me to be again exactly as I am now you, to find a chance of existence though an utter and complete randomness of countless things happening? I would not know, therefore I leave this as a question for you to consider.

Answer 4

To get to the big-bang you'd need to rewind for about 14 billion years ☺

But it's a good question. And it leads one to what's called the 'Everett' interpretation of quantum mechanics. Under that assumption, every quantum event spawns a 'parallel' universe in which the result(s) of that event (or, more precisely, the outcome of that event). That means that there are universes in which the Earth formed exactly as it is now, only he Neanderthals survived and the Cro-Magnins died out. Universes in which the Wrights didn't invent heavier than air aircraft, nobody discovered the transistor, Hitler won in WWII, we destroyed ourselves with nuclear weapons in the 60's or 70's, and universes in which we have (by this time) learned some way to travel faster than light and we're busily colonizing the Galaxy.
Find a copy of 'The Fabric of Reality' by David Deutsch (he's the head of the Quantum Computing Lab at Oxford) and it'll give you a whole new perspective on 'reality'.

Doug

Answer 5

Everything would be completely different. All the species would be different. Humans certainly wouldn't be around. Actually their wouldn't even be mammals. Their would be other critters that evolved over that vast time span.

I've been trying to get a grasp on the necessity of DNA in evolution and I think that until we find an independently evolved form of life we just won't know. If an intelligent species similar to ours evolved, I think that their civilization would look pretty much the same. The principles of science would still be the same so the cultures would develop along those lines.

Also, they'd be sitting around with their various religions saying "everything would be just the same, it's the will of God"

Answer 6

Considering the vastness of the univesre a billion to one odds are not that big so randomness is more than likley than any other theory. nothing would change unless you changed it and even if you change it it would gaurantee it to be different just create a predestination paradox everything that is now is becuase you did something to change it which was part of time anyway. another possibilty If you did go back in time and changed things you would probably create a Parallel Universe than change the first one that already existed.


just to add another 2p's worth ive heard is impossible to reverse time back further then when a time machine has been invented and turned it on. so you couldnt go further back in time even if you had the button but saying that who knows maybe an alien race has already made one before earth was even here

Answer 7

"Random" is just a human word for a pattern too complex for them to understand.
"True Randomness" as you might think to know it doesn't actually exist.

If you rewound the Universe 5 billion years.... unless you actually applied some distinct change to the Universe to disrupt the reaction.... time would play out exactly the same way again.

Answer 8

I hate that these questions go under "philosophy". It's the same phenomenon of moronic simplification as organised religion. This is a complex question requiring that history, biology, psychology etc. is applied to massive amounts of information that we don't have. There's no shortcut through a philosophy forum.

Answer 9

permit see=we've historic checklist indicating existance of human beings to be approximately 5800 years from the Semetic calendar. We substract that from 5 billions years that could carry you back right into some microseconds of Heavenly Time(time relative to a Heavenly physique of reference). Probablibalistic formation isn't random. on account that risk is a compelled function. meaning its a based function. subsequently we can't communicate appropriate to the Universe and organic and organic existence as being randomly formed.

Answer 10

If we had one of these rewind buttons and hit it, I think everything would turn out 99.9% the same.