Universe's Doom: Three Theories
Universe's Doom: Three Theories
Universe Ending Graph (by Google)
Now the question is how. Theorists have concluded three theories about the inevitable doom.
1) Heat Death/Big Freeze - This is the end, first Albert Einstein thought of. He stated a mysterious kind of matter called dark matter that is slowing the expansion of the universe. So at one point, the dark matter and gravity will tie up and the universe would stabilize in expansion. Eventually, all the stars would exhaust the gas for stars formation and the existing ones would die. The black holes would suck everything on the way. Finally, the universe would turn into a lifeless void, dead forever with the temperature at absolute zero (0 K or -273 deg. Celsius). So now nothing will move again.
2) Big Rip - For many years we thought the end was the Big Freeze. But in 1929, everything turned the other way. An American astronomer, Edwin Powell Hubble discovered that the light from galaxies was getting redder, which meant they were racing away from us. This phenomenon was called Redshift. This led to the conclusion that the dark energy in the universe is accelerating the expansion of the universe. The end is called the Big Rip. It would take the Big Rip a billion years to start and finish.
After 20-30 billion years later, dark energy would be so strong, that it would surpass gravity in the universe and become the dominant force in the universe. The consequences are that spacetime would be stretched and torn apart. Galaxies would be ripped apart as stars would be flying faster than the speed of light. Then gas from stars would be snatched away. No new ones would be produced, and existing ones would disintegrate. Planets, asteroids, black holes, and even you, have the same fate. Finally, all matter, down to the subatomic level will be ripped apart. So atomic nuclei would disintegrate until there are photons that would be able to fly faster than light.
3) Big Crunch - This scenario is the exact opposite of the Big Rip. So as stated, gravity would become a dominant force as the dark energy weakens to nothing. Then the universe would stop expanding and begins to contract. All galaxies throughout the enormous 93,000,000,000 light-years expanse would merge into one super-giant unshaped galaxy. Stars would crash into each other.
Since an object contracting would have a high density, heat would start in the universe with temperatures rising from 3 K (-270 deg. Celsius) to 10,000 K (9727 deg. Celsius) to more. Again, stars would die because the temperature they are facing from the outside would be more than the inside fusion heat. Hence, they would be baked from the outside and die. With the temperature rising, the universe would change colour from black to grey to light grey to brown to orange to red to yellow to pure white.
Now let's not forget the black holes. They will eat all matter and merge with all black holes to form one ultra-massive mega black hole that contains the matter of the universe. Finally, when the universe is nothing more than a black hole, it would devour the universe, including itself and the universe forms into one single point called a singularity.
The result? Well, think about the Big bang, it was born from a singularity. Perhaps a new universe might form from it. This is known as Big Bounce.
These are the three uplifting theories about the inevitable demise of the universe. But remember, these are theories, not real, so either one is correct or all of them are wrong.
We may never find what exists beyond the universe, why it exists and how will it die. But we must continue to decipher the universe using our only wisdom - science, physics, and quantum mechanics in the time left. We must find at least the dark matter our the reason for our existence or multiverse before our chances are over.
Thank you for reading.
Aditya VN Kadiyala
It was really informative ; I never even heard the theories 2 and 3.
ReplyDelete