There are scientists who are endeavoring to apply quantum theory to the whole universe, despite our current ignorance of how to combine quantum theory and general relativity into the single account that would be needed for a true quantum cosmology. Speculations of this kind are interesting but uncertain and not much should be built upon them. Yet one proposal is of some interest from our present concern. It supposes that baby universes are continually bubbling up from fluctuations in the primeval ur-state, which is the quantum gravitational vacuum. Many such bubbles just fade away, but some are blown up, by a process called inflation, into entities of cosmic dimensions, enjoying cosmic lifetimes. We are believed, but those who espouse this view, to be living in one such long-lived fluctuation. In the end our particular bubble will burst, but others "elsewhere" will come into existence as its successors. The cosmic pot will boil away "forever." Even if something like this proposal were to prove to be correct, it would only present a scene of occasional islands of transient meaningfulness erupting within an ocean of absurdity.
