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The Strangest Question at the end of the Universe

Aperture | September 1, 2026



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The year is 2061. Two engineers stand before a machine and ask it the only question that has ever really mattered, can the death of the universe be undone? The machine considers, and answers: not enough data. So the question is asked again. And again. Across a hundred thousand years, across galaxies humanity has not yet touched, the question returns, and the answer never changes. Not once, all the way to the end of time itself.

This is the world of Isaac Asimov’s The Last Question, a story most people remember as a meditation on limits, on the one problem too large for any civilization to solve. But there is another way to read it. Because every time these people leap forward, every time they build something greater than what came before, it happens for the same reason. They have found a new source of energy. And that is not just a detail in a story. That is the story of humanity.

00:00 The strangest question at the end of the Universe
01:59 The First Spark
06:33 Liquid Gold
11:50 White Gold
19:59 The Real Question

Aperture explores the ideas shaping how we think — philosophy, psychology,
and the hidden forces behind human behavior. New perspectives, every week.

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#universe #energy #entropy #humanity #future #energycrisis

Written by Aperture

Comments

This post currently has 33 comments.

  1. @anon-i6p

    September 1, 2026 at 10:28 pm

    Four logicians walk into a bar.
    The bartender asks "Drinks for all of you?"
    "I don't know" says the first. "I don't know" says the second. "I don't know" says the third. "Yes" says the last one.
    It's the same deal with this short story. Not enough data to answer the question. Impossible to collect all the data until the end.

  2. @AC_Unit11

    September 1, 2026 at 10:28 pm

    3:15 "empty calories" is misused here. The issue is that the digestive system of the bear does not get any calories/energy out of the bone or head of the fish. This is not empty calories, its low calorie to volume ratio.

    Empty calories are foods that are high in calories but low in nutrients, like candy. Kind of the opposite of what you meant there.

    Great vid nonetheless

  3. @mikeanderson4759

    September 1, 2026 at 10:28 pm

    Does it bother anyone else that all the history, philosophy and science in this video ended up not only promoting one particular solution over others, but one specific company? Is this how we're doing infomercials now? 😂😢

  4. @NTG-hg7zx

    September 1, 2026 at 10:28 pm

    Once heard a joke about saskatchewan (however you spell it) ,guy in a old folks home needs a bed bath, they decide to send a young trainee nurse in to do it, the old matron has seen previously he has a tattoo of the word "swan" on his private part, and wonders what the young hot nurse will make think of it, trainee nurse goes in completes the bed bath and comes back out to the matron, the matron asks innocently "did you happen to notice his….uh…tattoo…?" Young nurse goes "oh yeah, i tried not to stare but you know how these things are, it said saskatchewan didnt it?" 😂

  5. @kiasoe

    September 1, 2026 at 10:28 pm

    Humans fantasizing about saving the universe while running the Earth to the ground is the kind of peak comedy even Hollywood won't be able to come up with. Hypocrisy at its finest just as the race itself

  6. @splenth

    September 1, 2026 at 10:28 pm

    Yes, "the decline of everything" WILL be undone: "But the day of the Lord will come in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away. For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind." (2 Peter 3:10 / Rev 21:1 / Isaiah 65:17) This is a fallen world, therefore entropy, but it will be remade imperishable – it is promised

  7. @IanK369

    September 1, 2026 at 10:28 pm

    We can now see far enough to contemplate the end of the universe, and still we want to push past it. I'm tempted to frame this as a choice between heroic and tragic but, maybe it's a little of both.

  8. @GoryWory

    September 1, 2026 at 10:28 pm

    Videos on this channel have become mass-produced slop.

    Each time, we get an "awe-inspiring" recapitulation of human evolution and progress, all mixed with unsolved questions of physics and existentialist "koans" to "blow our minds even further…"
    The only channel that makes actually good space/physics documentaries is History of the Universe.
    And they drop one video every ~2 months, because it actually takes time and effort to make them.

    And it actually has normal thumbnails — whoever runs that channel doesn't put his face everywhere, let alone in poorly edited thumbnail slop.

  9. @Yaj9867

    September 1, 2026 at 10:28 pm

    I think hunter gatherers would disagree with some of the statements you started out with. Firstly that they aren’t part of “humankind”. Also, surplus isn’t what gave us time to sit around and tell stories. Hunter gatherers had much more free time to sit and tell stories than people did once they took on the responsibilities and trappings of farming and civilization. Surplus created wealth inequality and was the beginning of the end of egalitarian societies. Our hunter gatherer ancestors were in many ways superior to us in the ways they lived in harmony with the land and took only what they needed.

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