Future Of An Expanding Universe
Observations suggest that the expansion of the universe will continue forever. If so, the universe will cool as it expands, eventually becoming too cold to sustain life. For this reason, this future scenario is popularly called the Big Freeze.
If dark energy—represented by the cosmological constant, a constant energy density filling space homogeneously, or scalar fields, such as quintessence or moduli, dynamic quantities whose energy density can vary in time and space—accelerates the expansion of the universe, the space between clusters of galaxies will grow at an increasing rate. Redshift will have stretched ancient, incoming photons (even gamma rays) to undetectably long wavelengths and low energies. Stars are expected to form normally for 1×1012 to 1×1014 years, but eventually the supply of gas needed for star formation will be exhausted. And as existing stars ran out of fuel and ceased shining, the universe would slowly and inexorably grow darker, one star at a time. §IID, According to theories that predict proton decay, the stellar remnants left behind would disappear, leaving behind only black holes which themselves eventually disappear as they emit Hawking radiation. Ultimately, if the universe reaches a state in which the temperature approaches a uniform value, no further work will be possible, resulting in a final heat death of the universe.
Read more about Future Of An Expanding Universe: Cosmology, Future History, Timeline, Future Without Proton Decay, Graphical Timeline
Famous quotes containing the words expanding universe, future of, future, expanding and/or universe:
“In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis.”
—Quentin Crisp (b. 1908)
“The future of humanity is uncertain, even in the most prosperous countries, and the quality of life deteriorates; and yet I believe that what is being discovered about the infinitely large and infinitely small is sufficient to absolve this end of the century and millennium. What a very few are acquiring in knowledge of the physical world will perhaps cause this period not to be judged as a pure return of barbarism.”
—Primo Levi (1919–1987)
“The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.
The facts: nothing matters but the facts: worship of the facts leads to everything, to happiness first of all and then to wealth.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)
“... friendship ... is essential to intellectuals. You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“The kind of scientist who has no room for faith in his universe is rather old-fashioned nowadays.”
—Robert D. Andrews, and Nick Grindé. Dr. John Garth (Boris Karloff)