• Question: when will the universe end?

    Asked by anon-256854 to Julian on 26 Jun 2020.
    • Photo: Julian Onions

      Julian Onions answered on 26 Jun 2020:


      First it depends on what you mean, and scientists are not even sure how it will end, if indeed it does.
      The simplest idea is that the universe will eventually wind down, that there will be no more material to make stars, and the stars we have will eventually go out, and we’ll be left with just a lot of black holes. They too will eventually evaporate and there will be a universe with just not very much in it.
      However this will take trillions of years, and the universe is only a few billion years old.

      There are other possible scenarios, including the big-rip where dark energy grows like a monster and eventually rips everything to bits – from galaxies, to stars and planets and eventually atoms. However we have no idea if this hypothesis is at all supported at the moment. This too would certainly take billions of years too.
      So – the answer to your questions, is we don’t know, and we are not even sure what it means, but whatever that is, it won’t be for a long long time!

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