end of the universe????

[Slink]

I know this will not happen for billions of years, but i just thought of it, so thought i would ask your views

what will happen when all of the stars in the universe burn out and turn into black holes?

as life needs sunlight and heat to survive, that would be it for live everywere in the universe would it not? as soon as the final star dies, there will be no more life anywhere, right?

[ikarl]

quite difficult for me get my head round that, but yeah, that's my understanding

[Prawnboy]

certainly life as we know it all stops at absolte zero, so with no heat sources that would be it.
It would be a wee while after the final habitable planets star gives up the ghost.

[Eric Mc]

We are talking hundreds of billions or perhaps even thousands of billions of years in the future.

[ReallyReallyGood]

'Heat death' is but one of several hypothesised eventual outcomes of our universe, albeit the most accepted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_uni...

I prefer the Big Bounce theory myself, where the universe will ultimately collapse in on itself and the big-bang is repeated.

[Getragdogleg]

I wonder if this whole lot is actually sort of circular, and if we looked beyond what we believe is the smallest visible or theoretical thing we would eventually find the edges of what we think of as the edge of the known universe and that actually if you keep going down and down and down you would eventually get back to right here reading this.

[LordGrover]

Science, not philosophy.

[Getragdogleg]

LordGrover said:

Science, not philosophy.

Where is the line though ? when you start discussing "the universe" the possibilities for it to really confuse the hell out of us little people are numerous.

We will never really get it because it is too complicated and none of us will ever know because we will not be around that long.

[eldar]

ReallyReallyGood said:

'Heat death' is but one of several hypothesised eventual outcomes of our universe, albeit the most accepted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_uni...

I prefer the Big Bounce theory myself, where the universe will ultimately collapse in on itself and the big-bang is repeated.

The big bounce seems to be logical. More plausible than religion

[Shaolin]

Iron is the most stable element (so I was told once, in terms of least energetic) so the universe is slowly becoming iron, very cold iron, at nearly absolute zero. A quick google suggests that this will take about 10^1000000000000000000000000000 (26 zeros) years. This is sort of scary except it's stupidly longer than the 1.4 x 10^7 years we've had so far so I'm not much bothered - and it might be wrong anyway.

[Chilli]

Interesting. When this happenedd, perhaps it all goes quiet for a while and then there's another "Big Bang" and the whole process starts again. Perhaps this cycle has happened countless times already?

[TheD]

eldar said:

The big bounce seems to be logical. More plausible than religion

Did they not recently agree that the bounce theory was unlikely (although not ruled out)due to the universe actually speeding up its expansion, and that they believe there just isn't enough gravity to pull it back together again.

Plus me moving in with 3 stunning nymphos is more plausible than religion.

[annodomini2]

The most plausible (based on the information we currently have available are:

1. The big chill
2. The big rip

The big chill is mentioned, everything spreads apart and gets very cold.

The big rip is based on the current understanding that the expansion of the universe is accelerating and therefore there will come a point where the expansion tears the universe apart.

[Nom de ploom]

as the universe continues to expand and we move further away from everything it will get dark long before the stars all burn out anyway afaik.

the night sky will be totally black apart from the moon if it is still there...

[Ijm]

By then we'll be creating our own brand spanking new Universes to escape into.

[Mr E]

ReallyReallyGood said:

'Heat death' is but one of several hypothesised eventual outcomes of our universe, albeit the most accepted.

Entropy wins in the end.

[Shaolin]

Ijm said:

By then we'll be creating our own brand spanking new Universes to escape into.

I do that most days

[Mojocvh]

Shaolin said:

Ijm said:

By then we'll be creating our own brand spanking new Universes to escape into.

I do that most days

Classic video game Elite is getting a 21st Century makeover.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20165344

[tapkaJohnD]

The Moon will not be there when the nearest star is so far away due to Universe expansion that it disappears, when it's too far away for its light to have got here to see. Because long before then the Sun will be coming to the end of its life, and become a Red Giant with a diameter greater than the orbit of the Earth around it. So we won't be there either.

JOhn

[PD9]

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