Heat Death or Big Crunch?

[Bill McBlueState]

If you could be here to see the universe end, which way would you prefer? Feel free to elaborate below!

[Bill McBlueState]

1. I like the big crunch.

It's tidier. And we would get to observe a cosmological blueshift, which would be fun.

But the evidence points against it these days.

[Orsino]

14. Me, too.

It's as though the entire cosmos is a black hole, from which nothing can ultimately escape.

Plus it gives us potential do-overs. Imagine entire universes with no Bushes.

[WindRavenX]

2. I rather like the idea of a cosmic freeze myself

Cool, literally.;)

[trotsky]

3. Third option: the Big Rip

If there is an antigravity force, and if it's getting stronger with time, there will eventually come a time when even subatomic particles fly apart. That would be pretty cool.

[smirkymonkey]

4. I have no idea as to what you are talking about.

Anyone care to explain? Thanks :)

[trotsky]

5. If big bang cosmology is correct...

and the universe began with an enormous explosion into existence, then there are two most commonly accepted ways for the universe to end:

1) Heat death. The universe will continue to expand and expand until everything cools off, and there is no longer enough free energy available to form stars, planets, and support life.

2) Big crunch. The expansion of the universe stops, then everything starts coming back together again, culminating in a huge "big crunch" of all matter back into one point in space. Perhaps to start another big bang, but who knows.

I mentioned above there is a third option being postulated - in order to explain anomalies, some astronomers and physicists have postulated a companion force to gravity: antigravity. Some theorists think that antigravity's power is increasing over time, and that eventually everything in the universe will start flying apart - from large scales down to small. First, galaxies will no longer cluster together. Then galaxies themselves will fall apart, followed by star systems, planets, aggregates, molecules, atoms, even subatomic particles - POOF - flying apart into disintegration.

Neat, huh?

[smirkymonkey]

8. Thanks!

I think I would choose the flying apart option - it sounds kind of fun! :)

[NNadir]

6. I'm a heat death kind of guy.

I like disorder.

I'm not really worried about the fate of the universe since I expect that the creation and extinction of what appears to be all things is cyclical. This is because cyclical things are so common in nature.

I have no proof and this is where my practical atheism ends. I believe the universe is cyclical as an element of faith.

[phantom power]

7. I vote for heat death, but what about steady-state models?

Brane theory suggests the possibility of "big-bang" like events being triggered by collision of branes. In this model were correct, a brane such as the universe we inhabit could be the host to an infinite number of such collisions, each creating a new expansion of matter into our universe.

[Az]

9. Don't forget M-Theory

Still a viable possibility with a multitude of multiverses in the offering.

[Dogmudgeon]

10. Pish tush!

I think the universe will just blink out of existence, right in the middle of minding its own business.

All of the sudden, some necessary condition for being a universe will change or go away, and the universe will just stop existing. Just like that.

Heat and/or entropy will have nothing to do with it, because they'll be gone, too.

--p!

[phantom power]

11. What if this has already happened?

I mean, we think we live in a "universe" but what do we have to compare it to?

[sakabatou]

12. Isn't it in 100 billion years that the universe will be totally empty?

or was it trillion?

[Nihil]

13. Yeah ...

... it takes the shelf-stackers *ages* to get round to this part of
the store at this time ...

:-)

("Hey Gabriel! They're out of galaxies on aisle 4 again ... those things
are just flying off the shelves today ...")