Somewhere between a second and a millenary from now , you will conk . Your body and all of its part will lay off serve and repay the Earth as regular , exanimate hooey . The Earth , too , will pass away , engulf by an expanding , senesce Sun . The Sun will burn off all of its fuel and end up a white dwarf , then burn out and die . The milklike Way will clash with nearby Andromeda , and form a orotund , elliptical extragalactic nebula , which will pass away by losing all of its superstar to intergalactic outer space . The army corps of those remaining stars will die , decaying into their constituent parts . The universe will age onward until all matter is either stored in black hole or float as destitute elementary particles . Those pitch-dark hole will vaporise , and the universe will pass . All that was will be an icy moth-eaten nothing , forever .
This is one of the happier possible endings — this “ heat decease , ” as in , the end of heat , at least leave us meter to say cheerio . The truth is , the universe far predates humans , it will far outlast mankind , and contemplating its dying is a cheerless effort that highlights our unbelievable insignificance . At least studying the physical science of it all serves as a nice pastime while we wait to dissolve into nihility .
“ We can attempt to read it , but there ’s nothing we can do to affect it in any way , ” Katie Mack , North Carolina State University assistant professor currently writinga leger on the end of the existence , state Gizmodo . “ We have no legacy in the cosmos , finally . That ’s an interesting concept . ”
The Big Bang and expansion of the universe.Image: Sidharth Nikam (JPL, NASA)
Heat end , or the “ big freeze , ” is broadly speaking considered the most likely time to come , based on how things are looking today . The universe is spread out , and will continue enlarge . As things move farther apart , stars will form less frequently from the sparser dust and flatulency . The last inglorious hollow will have slowly evaporated into vitality through the theoretical processproposed by Stephen Hawking , perhaps in a googol ( that ’s 10100 ) years . And maybe some time afterward , the remaining particles will decompose , and the entire universe will adopt an fair temperature of virtually , but not exactly , right-down zero . Basically , the population will be so big and sparse that the betting odds of finding anything at all will be effectively absolute zero .
None of this will happen any sentence soon . Provided humans make it our own ego - destructive propensity , the Earth ’s atmospheric state could have another billion years , and the Sun perhaps 7 billion to 10 billion years before it grows into a reddish giant , ejects its outer layers , and remain just a glowing core around the same size as the Earth but throng far more mass , called a blanched gnome , according to John Baez , a physicist at University of California , Riverside . belittled ruby superstar will cohere around for perhaps a hundred trillion years — maybe man can settle on a planet orb a nice red dwarflike Proxima Centaurito dwell out our days . These are timescales far beyond human comprehension — think of the amount of time it would take to take the air across the universe at its present size , if you had to cease and count every atom in the universe after each step .
“ I estimate everyone tends to palpate depressed about it , ” Baez order Gizmodo . “ the great unwashed are future - thinking animals , and we always care to reckon about life in footing of a story , and go for it has a glad ending . It goes against our brain to imagine growing other than thing getting more interesting , but there ’s no reason to think that this will last forever . ”
Some more eventful theorized fates could make it sooner , like the Big Rip . You might be aware that in 1998 , scientists discovered the macrocosm was n’t just expanding , but that the elaboration rate was increasing . They theorize that some energy seemingly innate to the vacuum cleaner of the cosmos , called dark energy , powers the accelerated expansion . There ’s a possibility that in over 100 billion years , the dark vim will cause the population to expand so quickly that it tears apart galaxies , solar system , planets , and atoms before they can hunt down out of Energy Department on their own . The quad between every individual point would grow immeasurably large . Physics theory seems stacked in party favour of heat decease over the Big Rip , but who knows — observationsdon’t forbid it .
Then , there ’s the chance that the very vacancy of space itself could change . Maybe the “ Higgs domain , ” a field the permeates the macrocosm that determines the mass of subatomic particle , is n’t in the lowest energy configuriation . Maybe it is actually “ metastable ” and there ’s a lower - push ground state it could disintegrate to . Imagine spending your whole life live on a chopine , thinking it was the self-colored land — this platform is the metastable state . peradventure one sidereal day , the platform will collapse and reveal a genuine level a hundred feet below . The Torah of physic as you know them would no longer figure out , and you would fall and pass . This is essentially what would encounter if the world shoot from a metastable state to a more unchanging country , if we were live on the program all along . This would end the macrocosm as we bonk it , since this raw , lower - energy universe would not tolerate the cosmos of the present - 24-hour interval Standard Model that governs the identities and interactions of particles that make up matter . It ’s unconvincing such an effect would occurbefore the heat death does . But it would be a spectacular death .
“ At some spot in the universe you ’d create a bubble of straight vacuum cleaner that expands at the speed of ignitor and enfold the universe , destroying everything , ” said Mack . Its light amphetamine means you would n’t see it hail — the destruction would arrive at the same time with the warning that dying was come .
But not every potential cosmic finish is one of utter devastation and emptiness . Maybe in some removed , post - heat - death time to come , the energy in the macrocosm ’s vacuum could ad libitum jump back upwardly at a point , initiating puffiness at that stop in space from which wholly raw universes take shape , Alan Guth , MIT physicist who invented the theory of cosmic pretentiousness , told Gizmodo . Perhaps that ’s how our population formed , and perhaps there are an infinite number of cosmos mold in the same style , decaying out of an infinitely expand grander macrocosm . Maybe there are place beyond the reach of our own universe that wo n’t be impacted by the demise of our own .
“ This is the most optimistic compass point of view among possibility , because even though our part of the universe will pass out , other portion that may be teeming with life would go on forever , ” Guth said . Our universe dies , either way .
And maybe dark Energy Department is n’t an congenital , perpetual value to the universe . mayhap , as we antecedently reported , itsstrength is decreasing , which might go to the universe ’s expanding upon finally slowing . Everything could then turn around under sombreness ’s military group and collapse — that ’s the “ Big Crunch . ”
There ’s a band we do n’t know about the universe , so any or none of these ideas could be right . Any Modern discovery about the nature of dark vigor , the Higgs boson , or spacetime itself could give away a vastly unlike destiny of the universe , where everything wastes off to an infinitely huge nullity , everything collapse , or new universe spawn from the ashes of the old , or something else entirely happens . disregarding , humanity ’s cosmos and bequest — and everything else , ever — will cease to exist or have meaning .
“ Even though we all love that we in person are pop off to die , it still kinda hurts that so is everything else , ” say Mack . “ There ’s nothing that ’s exit to live on . ”
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