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If theres one thing scientists love discussing more than the beginning of the universe, its the end.
There are literally hundreds of known stellar events that could obliterate the life on our planet before
we even knew what hit us. The meteor that touched down in Russia kind of cemented that fact;
however, the chances of Earth suffering a life-ending global catastrophe are actually rather slim.
But we know that it is coming. At the very least, it will happen when the sun transitions into a red
giant.
The end of everything else though, is a little bit more difficult to predict; however, that wont stop
scientists from speculating and theorizing. With this in mind, here are four popular theories on how
the universe might end.
Note: Astrophysicists believe that the ultimate fate of the universe depends on three things: 1) The
universes overall shape 2) Its density and 3) How much dark energy the universe is truly made of.
The first two scenarios hinge on the universe existing in a flat or open system (one that is
negatively curved, similar to the surface of a saddle.
Original
image credit: Melody Sundberg (Source)
This is the point at which the universe would reach a maximum state of entropy. Any stars that
remain will continue to slowly burn away, until the last star is extinguished. Instead of fiery cradles,
galaxies will become coffins filled with remnants of dead stars. It has been said in the very distant
future, that intelligent civilizations will someday truly into the sky and think they are alone.
Everything will be so far away, the light from distant stars and galaxies could never reach them, due
to the expansion of the universe.
Many astronomers and physicists alike believe this may be one of the most probable
scenarios thought up at the present moment.
https://futurism.com/four-ways-the-universe-could-end/
Home
Big Bang Overview
Big Bang Theory
Cosmic Microwaves
Acceler- ation
Galaxy Formation
Before The Big Bang
The End
The picture at the left depicts the three possible endings for the
universe. Up until very recently (late 1990's) it was generally
accepted that the universe would end in a big crunch. While it was
known that the universe was expanding, scientists believed that
sooner or later the force of gravity would overtake any other forces
and the universe would begin to decelerate. This would eventually
lead to a Big Crunch billions of years from now.
Whether or not gravity took over was mathematically depicted by
the density parameter, Omega (). If was greater than one, then
gravity would win as portrayed above in the Big Crunch. However,
as scientists began to measure , it began to look like was very
close, if not equal to "1" (flat in mathematical terms). Using ground
based and balloon based instruments, scientists estimated that
was "1" plus or minus 15%. The WMAP satellite confirmed that
was one within 0.5%. This meant that the universe would decelerate
gradually approaching zero but never get there. The universe would
keep expanding forever but at a snail's pace forever slowing down,
but never stopping (depicted by the middle line in the chart).
In the late 1990's it was discovered that the universe was in fact
expanding at an accelerating rate. This fact threw all previous
theories out the window. No one could explain how such a
phenomenon could be happening without invoking an unknown
force called dark energy. Dark energy is a form of anti-gravity
working over large distances that is in the ultimate tug of war with
gravity. To this day we have no credible evidence of how this force
operates. However, it has been measured ever more accurately and
just about all scientists believe there is some type of dark force
operating in outer space. This remains one of the great mysteries of
our time.
If dark energy continues to push indefinitely, the universe will
expand faster and faster exponentially until ultimately it rips itself
apart. This is now called the Big Rip. Observations of the early
universe appear to support the theory that dark energy is a
universal, unchanging force. This means that if the dark energy
force has not changed over billions of years in the past, it is unlikely
to change in the future. So we can expect the universe to continue
to expand at an accelerated pace into the future. At some point our
galaxy will be alone in space, because all the other galaxies will
have traveled beyond the observational horizon and the only light
will be from our own galaxy stars.
Most Likely Universe Ending
No one knows for sure how the universe will end, but here is a
reasonable proposition. Assume that the Lambda Big Bang Model is
correct. Also assume that the shape of the universe (mathematically
speaking) is the infinite "flat" model ( = "1"). Accepting the
Lambda Big Bang Model, a flat universe, and the presence of dark
energy, then the universe will keep on expanding at an accelerated
rate forever, ultimately ending in a cold, dark state. Eventually, all
the stars will burn out, leaving stellar-mass objects as remnants, i.e.
white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. Subsequently, the
stellar remnants (white dwarfs, neutron stars, and other smaller
astronomical objects) will themselves be destroyed by proton decay
(assuming that proton decay is real), leaving only black holes.
Finally, even black holes will disappear due to Hawking Radiation
leaving only a diluted gas of photons and leptons.
A well publicized 2003 paper on the Big Rip by Robert R. Caldwell of
Dartmouth University et al. gives a blow by blow description of the
Big Rip end of our Solar System:
60 million years before the end, the Milky Way begins to fly apart.
Three months before the end, planets fly away.
Thirty minutes before the end, the earth erupts.
One second before the end, atoms and their nuclei break apart.
The End!
Top
Image credit:howstuffworks
The Big Freeze which is also known as 'heat death', or as I like to call
it, 'going out with a pathetic whimper.' Not my favourite scenario, I
think you can tell! This is what happens when the universe runs out
of energy. The entropy of the universe continuously increases until it
reaches a maximum value. It continues to endlessly expand until it
is flat. The moment that happens, heat in the system will be evenly
distributed, allowing no room for usable energy (or heat) to exist.
Basically, every star runs out of fuel and even black holes eventually
evaporate away. Frankly it sounds damn gloomy! Thankfully, if that
is what happens, it's a very long wait until that point.
The Big Slurp concerns that pesky Higgs Boson that has been
eluding us for years. The boson helps explain the existence of mass
in the cosmos. In other words, it underpins the workings of all the
matter we see around us.
"It turns out there's a calculation you can do in our Standard Model
of particle physics, once you know the mass of the Higgs boson,"
explained Dr Joseph Lykken. "If you use all the physics we know now,
and you do this straightforward calculation - it's bad news. What
happens is you get just a quantum fluctuation that makes a tiny
bubble of the vacuum the Universe really wants to be in. And
because it's a lower-energy state, this bubble will then expand,
basically at the speed of light, and sweep everything before it," the
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory theoretician said. "The
universe wants to be in a different state, so eventually to realize
that, a little bubble of what you might think of as an alternate
universe will appear somewhere, and it will spread out and destroy
us." Scary stuff. However, we need not panic for billions of years.
The Big Rip is not actually a new theory, having first been mooted
back in 2003, but has been gaining momentum recently in a
new paper by Assistant Professor of Mathematics Marcelo Disconzi in
collaboration with physics professors Thomas Kephart and Robert
Scherrer from Vanderbilt University. His new model tends to support
the alarming prospect of dark energy becoming stronger over time,
with the result that due to accelerated expansion the entire fabric of
space will be torn to shreds in an epically flamboyant fashion.
Image credit:Vanderbilt.edu
Dr Marcelo Disconzi, the mathematician who led the work at
Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, said: The idea of the Big Rip is
that eventually even the constituents of matter would start
separating from each other. Youd be seeing all the atoms being
ripped apart ... its fair to say that its a dramatic scenario.
The only thing we definitely know is that the universe is expanding
and that the rate is accelerating, said Disconzi. Thats about the
only thing we know for sure. Since it is well-proven that nothing can
travel faster than the speed of light, a Big Rip scenario is a natural
consequence of the equations. The universe would vanish in front of
your eyes. Basically, you dont want to be around for it.
22 billion years is a comfortably long time away. I quite like this one
though, it seems like exactly the scenario I would want to watch
from my table at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the
Universe.
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly
what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear
and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already
happened.
Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe