Everything has an ending. Even our grand universe, despite looking majestic and eternal, will end some day. But how will our universe end? That’s what theoretical astrophysicist Katie Mack writes about in her book titled The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking). In the book, Mack enumerates some possibilities of how our universe will end.
But far from being depressing, Mack’s account mixes a sense of reverence for the wonders of physics with an irreverent sense of humor and a disarming dose of candor.
Some potential finales are violent: If the universe’s expansion were to reverse, the cosmos collapsing inward in a Big Crunch, extremely energetic swells of radiation would ignite the surfaces of stars, exploding them. Another version of the end is quieter but no less terrifying: The universe’s expansion could continue forever. That end, Mack writes, “like immortality, only sounds good until you really think about it.” Endless expansion would beget a state known as “heat death”...
Perhaps more merciful than the purgatory of heat death is the possibility of a Big Rip, in which the universe’s expansion accelerates faster and faster, until stars and planets are torn apart, molecules are shredded and the very fabric of space is ripped apart.
Learn more about this over at ScienceNews.
(Image Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI/ Wikimedia Commons)