Is the universe dying?

[Grand Admiral Crunch]

Is the Universe Dying? - Universe Today

Is our 13.8 billion year old universe actually in its death throes?

Poor Universe, its demise announced right in it’s prime. At only 13.8 billion years old, when you peer across the multiverse it’s barely middle age. And yet, it sadly dwindles here in hospice.

Is it a Galactus infestation? The Unicronabetes? Time to let go, move on and find a new Universe, because this one is all but dead and gone and but a shell of its former self.

The news of imminent demise was recently broadcast in mid 2015. Based on research looking at the light coming from over 200,000 galaxies, they found that the galaxies are putting out half as much light as they were 2 billion years ago. So if our math is right, less light equals more death.

So tell it to me straight, Doctor Spaceman(SPAH-CHEM-AN), how long have we got? Astronomers have known for a long time that the Universe was much more active in the distant past, when everything was closer and denser, and better. Back then, more of it was the primordial hydrogen left over from the Big Bang, supplying galaxies for star formation. Currently, there are only 1 to 3 new stars formed in the Milky Way every year. Which is pretty slow by Milky Way standards.

Not even at the busiest time of star formation, our Sun formed 5 billion years ago. 5 billion years before that, just a short 4 billion after the Big Bang, star formation peaked out. There were 30 times more stars forming then, than we see today.

When stars were formed actually makes a difference. For example, the fact that it took so long for our Sun to form is a good thing. The heavier elements in the Solar System, really anything higher up the periodic table from hydrogen and helium, had to be formed inside other stars. Main sequence stars like our own Sun spew out heavier elements from their solar winds, while supernovae created the heaviest elements in a moment of catastrophic collapse. Astronomers are pretty sure we needed a few generations of stars to build up enough of the heavier elements that life depends on, and probably wouldn’t be here without it.

Even if life did form here on Earth billions of years ago, when the Universe was really cranking, it would wish it was never born. With 30 times as much star formation going on, there would be intense radiation blasting away from all these newly forming stars and their subsequent supernovae detonations. So be glad life formed when it did. Sometimes a little quiet is better.

So, how long has the Universe got? It appears that it’s not going to crash together in the future, it’s just going to keep on expanding, and expanding, forever and ever.

In a few billion years, star formation will be a fraction of what it is today. In a few trillion, only the longest lived, lowest mass red dwarfs will still be pushing out their feeble light. Then, one by one, galaxies will see their last star flicker and fade away into the darkness. Then there’ll only be dead stars and dead planets, cooling down to the background temperature of the Universe as their galaxies accelerate from one another into the expanding void.

Eventually everything will be black holes, or milling about waiting to be trapped in black holes. And these black holes themselves will take an incomprehensible mighty pile of years to evaporate away to nothing.

So yes, our Universe is dying. Just like in a cheery Sartre play, it started dying the moment it began its existence. According to astronomers, the Universe will never truly die. It’ll just reach a distant future when there’s so little usable energy, it’ll be mostly dead. Dead enough? Dead inside.

As Miracle Max knows, mostly dead is still slightly alive. Who knows what future civilizations will figure out in the googol years between then and now.

Too sad? Let’s wildly speculate on futuristic technologies advanced civilizations will use to outlast the heat death of the Universe or flat out cheat death and re-spark it into a whole new cycle of Universal renewal.

Is the universe dying? Oh sht!

 

[Fluffywolf]

Is the Universe Dying? - Universe Today



Is the universe dying? Oh sht!

The universe is exanding, and there's little reason to doubt the effect of that, the measurements taken have some leeway but are fairly consistent. But still, its based on measurements made in a timeframe that is essentially meaningless considering the size of the universe.

A heatdeath does seem most likely, but it's not quite fact yet either.

Perhaps the universe and all we know about it is merely in the throes of a single heartbeat.

 

[Fluffywolf]

Here's an interesting read:

Does gravity operate between galaxies? Observational evidence re-examined | Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences

Most interesting about it is how it essentially mentions the fallacy of observation within a frame of reference that is potentially outside of the perceivable scope of observable reality. (I think I may have butchered this sentence too much...)

Basicly, what we observe might not be enough to allow us to comprehend the entirety of the framework the universe operates in. (little better I think)

What I take from it is that we still know very little and the future of the universe is still very much an open question.

I once entertained the thought that the big bang might not have been a singular event, but a continuous event passing by out part of the universe 14 billion years ago, with the implications that the universe might be an indeterminate but potentially near infinite amount of time older than currently known. It would be able to explain both the reason of the exanding universe as well as dark energy (not dark matter). There are plenty of issues with that idea of course, hence it is merely a thought I entertained, as well as the fact there's (as far as I know) no way to test any of it, but it does feed on the fact that some of the assumptions astronomists are currently making (by say of what makes most sense), aren't entirely infallible either.

Basicly, there's still plenty of room for thought.

 

[Grand Admiral Crunch]

The universe is exanding, and there's little reason to doubt the effect of that, the measurements taken have some leeway but are fairly consistent. But still, its based on measurements made in a timeframe that is essentially meaningless considering the size of the universe.

A heatdeath does seem most likely, but it's not quite fact yet either.

Perhaps the universe and all we know about it is merely in the throes of a single heartbeat.

There's plenty of articles on the internet that say the lights in the universe are going out. Doesn't that make you wrong?

Besides, you think that dolphins have gills, which discredits your education level a little.

 

[Fluffywolf]

There's plenty of articles on the internet that say the lights in the universe are going out. Doesn't that make you wrong?

Besides, you think that dolphins have gills, which discredits your education level a little.

Keep reading articles on the internet. Any astronomer will tell you there is no reason to doubt that the universe will eventually suffer heat death, but no astronomor will tell you that that is an absolute fact.

I said that dolphins are descendant from land mammals and evolved back into the sea as something we could consider trying to do if waterworld becomes reality. I never said anything about dolphins having gills. Lol.

 

[Lark]

We have to save it, using the Power of Love.

 

[Grand Admiral Crunch]

We have to save it, using the Power of Love.

Care Bear Stare! lol If we could just get back to Marshmallow Glee Land, I think we'd be much better off.

 

[Grand Admiral Crunch]

Keep reading articles on the internet. Any astronomer will tell you there is no reason to doubt that the universe will eventually suffer heat death, but no astronomor will tell you that that is an absolute fact.

I was right!

I said that dolphins are descendant from land mammals and evolved back into the sea as something we could consider trying to do if waterworld becomes reality. I never said anything about dolphins having gills. Lol.

So dolphins are devolved people? lol

^just kidding. Sorry. I know it isn't funny the third time.

Okay, so, I'm in a dying universe. What is going to happen to me?

 

[Fluffywolf]

Okay, so, I'm in a dying universe. What is going to happen to me?

You will die looooong before it will die.

Most likely, unless there is something we don't know about keeping it alive, in which case only you will die.

 

[Grand Admiral Crunch]

You will die looooong before it will die.

Most likely, unless there is something we don't know about keeping it alive, in which case only you will die.

Take that universe!

But if it is dying right now, even though it's still got a lot of life in it, doesn't that affect me?

 

[Grand Admiral Crunch]

Die universe, DIE! I never liked you anyways

 

[Fluffywolf]

Take that universe!

But if it is dying right now, even though it's still got a lot of life in it, doesn't that affect me?

Physically? No, it doesn't.

Mentally though...

Die universe, DIE! I never liked you anyways

 

[Lark]

Care Bear Stare! lol If we could just get back to Marshmallow Glee Land, I think we'd be much better off.

Candyland?!

 

[Cellmold]

From serious contemplation to irreverence in two pages, very impressive.

The human mortality condrum continues.

 

[Yama]

What is dead may never die.

 

[Mole]

Only living things die. The universe is not a living thing so doesn't die. However we know in our viscera that it is all about me, so naturally the universe is all about me. And if I am born and die, so the universe is born and dies.

But I tell you what: I am surprised no one has yet applied mbti to the universe to determine which of the sixteen personality types the universe belongs. And just like us, the universe longs to belong. And should anyone question this belief, the universe gets nasty, just like us.

We see the microcosm in the macrocosm. We see ourselves in the universe. We are utterly and completely preposterous.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Only living things die. The universe is not a living thing so doesn't die. However we know in our viscera that it is all about me, so naturally the universe is all about me. And if I am born and die, so the universe is born and dies.

But I tell you what: I am surprised no one has yet applied mbti to the universe to determine which of the sixteen personality types the universe belongs. And just like us, the universe longs to belong. And should anyone question this belief, the universe gets nasty, just like us.

We see the microcosm in the macrocosm. We see ourselves in the universe. We are utterly and completely preposterous.

Define living

 

[Mole]

Define living

All the living things we know are based on DNA. So as far as we know, replicating DNA defines the living.

 

[Lark]

I try as hard as I can to approximate some sort of biophilious personality and its reflective of my core beliefs too and dont believe that any of this is a work of imaginative social construction or anything of that kind, its a reflection of the cosmos and nature and not a human, all too human projection onto an indifferent, absurd and dead externality.

Its not dead or dying, its just unwell at the moment and will recover.

 

[Grand Admiral Crunch]

Ends of the World | Neil deGrasse Tyson

Ends of the World
June 1, 1996 in the Read section

Natural History Magazine

by Neil deGrasse Tyson

From Natural History Magazine, June 1996

Sometimes it seems that everybody is trying to tell you when and how the world is supposed to end. Some scenarios are more familiar than others. Those that are widely discussed in the media include rampant infectious disease, nuclear war, collisions with asteroids or comets, and environmental decay. While different in origin, each can induce the end of human species (and perhaps selected other life forms) on Earth. Indeed implicit in clichéd slogans such as "Save the Earth" is the egocentric call to save life on Earth, not the planet itself.

In fact, humans cannot really kill Earth. Earth will remain in orbit around the Sun, along with its planetary brethren, long after Homo sapiens has become extinct by whatever cause. But there are less familiar, though just as real, end-of-world scenarios that jeopardize our temperate planet in its stable orbit around the Sun. I offer these prognostications not because humans are likely to live long enough to observe them, but because the tools of astrophysics enable me to calculate them. Three that come to mind are the death of the Sun, the impending collision between our Milky Way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy, and the death of the universe, about which the community of astrophysicists has recently achieved consensus.

Computer models of stellar evolution are akin to actuarial tables. They indicate a healthy 10 billion year life expectancy for our Sun. At an estimated age of 5 billion years, it has another 5 billion years of relatively stable energy output. By then, if we have not figured out a way to leave Earth, then we will bear witness to a remarkable evolutionary change in the Sun as it runs out of fuel.

The Sun owes its stability to the controlled fusion of hydrogen into helium in its 15 million degree core. The gravity that wants to collapse the star is held in balance by the outward gas pressure that is sustained by the fusion. While more than 90 percent of the Sun's atoms are hydrogen, the ones that matter are those that reside in the core. When the core is exhausted of its hydrogen, the Sun is left with a central ball of helium atoms that require a higher temperature than does hydrogen to fuse into heavier elements. Now out of balance, gravity wins, the inner regions of the star collapse, and the central temperature rises through 100 million degrees, which triggers the fusion of helium into carbon.

In the process, the Sun's luminosity grows astronomically, which forces its outer layers to expand to bulbous proportions, engulfing the orbits of Mercury and Venus. Eventually, the Sun will swell to occupy the entire sky as its expansion subsumes the orbit of Earth. This would be bad. The temperature on Earth will rise until it equals the 3,000 degree rarefied outer layers of the expanded Sun. Our atmosphere will evaporate away into interplanetary space and the oceans will boil off as Earth becomes a red-hot, charred ember orbiting deep within the Sun. Eventually, the Sun will cease all nuclear fusion, loose its spherical, tenuous, gaseous envelope, and expose its dying central core. Scenarios such as these will one day force manned space travel to become a global priority.

Not long after the Sun terrorizes Earth, the Milky Way will encounter some problems of its own. Of the hundreds of thousands of galaxies whose velocity relative to the Milky Way has been measured, only a few are moving toward us while all the rest are moving away at a speed directly related to their distances from us. Discovered in the 1920s by Edwin Hubble (after whom the Hubble Space Telescope was named), the general recession of galaxies is the observational signature of our expanding universe. The Milky Way and the three-hundred-billion-star Andromeda galaxy are close enough to each other that the effect of the expanding universe is negligible. We happen to be drifting toward each other at about 100 kilometers per second (a quarter million miles per hour). If our (unknown) sideways motion is small, then at this rate, the 2.2 million light-year distance that separates us will shrink to zero in about seven billion years.

Interstellar space is so vast that there is no need to fear whether stars in the Andromeda galaxy will accidentally slam into the Sun. During the galaxy-galaxy encounter, which would be a spectacular sight from a safe distance, stars are likely to pass each other by. But the event would not be worry-free. Some of Andromeda's stars are likely to swing close enough to our solar system to influence the orbit of the planets and of the hundreds of billions of resident comets. For example, close stellar flybys can throw one's gravitational allegiance into question. Computer simulations commonly show that the planets are either stolen by the interloper in a "flyby looting" or they become unbound and are flung forth into interplanetary space.

Remember how choosy Goldilocks was with other people's porridge? If we are stolen by the gravity of another star, there is no guarantee that our new-found orbit will be at the right distance to sustain liquid water on Earth's surface—a condition generally agreed to be a prerequisite to sustaining life as we know it. If Earth orbits too close, its water supply evaporates. And if Earth orbits too far, its water supply freezes solid.

By some miracle of future technology, if Earth inhabitants had managed to prolong the life of the Sun, then these efforts will be rendered irrelevant when Earth is flung in space. The absence of a nearby energy source will allow Earth's surface temperature to drop swiftly to hundreds of degrees below zero Fahrenheit. This would also be bad. Our cherished atmosphere of nitrogen and oxygen and other gases would first liquefy and then freeze solid, encrusting the Earth like icing on a cake. We would freeze to death before we had a chance to starve to death. The last surviving life on Earth would be those privileged organisms that had evolved to rely not on the Sun's energy but on (what will then be) weak geothermal sources, where the heat of Earth's interior emerges from the crust. At the moment, humans are not among them. There will be, of course, other planets that we can visit in orbit around healthy stars in other galaxies.

But the long-term fate of the cosmos cannot be postponed or avoided. No matter where you hide, you will be part of a universe that inexorably marches towards a peculiar oblivion. The latest and best evidence available on the space density of matter and the expansion rate of the universe suggest that we are on a one-way trip: the collective gravity of everything in the universe is insufficient to halt and reverse the cosmic expansion.

Currently, the most successful description of the universe and its origin combines the big bang with our modern understanding of gravity, derived from Einstein's general theory of relativity. The early universe was a trillion-degree maelstrom of matter mixed with energy, affectionately known as the primordial soup. During the fourteen billion year expansion that followed, the background temperature of the universe has dropped to a mere 3 degrees on the absolute (kelvin) temperature scale. As the universe continues to expand, this temperature will continue to approach zero.

Such a low background temperature does not directly affect us on Earth because our Sun (normally) grants us a cozy life. But as each generation of stars is born from the interstellar gas clouds of the galaxy, less and less gas remains to compose the next generation of stars. Eventually the gas supply will run out, as it already has in nearly half the galaxies in the universe. The small fraction of stars with the highest mass collapse completely, never to be seen again. Some stars end their lives by blowing their guts across the galaxy in a supernova explosion. This returned gas can then be tapped for the next generation. But the majority of stars—Sun included—ultimately exhaust the fuel at their cores and, after the bulbous giant phase, collapse to form a compact orb of matter that radiates its feeble leftover-heat to the frigid universe

The complete list of corpses may be familiar: black holes, neutron stars (pulsars), white dwarfs, and even brown dwarfs are each a dead end on the evolutionary tree of stars. What they each have in common is an eternal lock on cosmic construction materials. In other words, if stars burn out and no new ones are formed to replace them, then the universe will eventually contain no living stars.

How about Earth? We rely on the Sun for a daily infusion of energy to sustain life. If the Sun and the energy from all other stars were cut off from us then mechanical and chemical processes (life included) on and within Earth would "wind down." Eventually, the energy of all motion gets lost to friction and the system reaches a single uniform temperature. This would really be bad. The starless Earth will lie naked in the presence of the frozen background of the expanding universe. The temperature on Earth will drop the way a freshly baked pie cools on a window sill. Yet Earth is not alone in this fate. Trillions of years into the future, when all stars are gone, and every process in every nook and cranny of the expanding universe has wound down, all parts of the cosmos will cool to the same temperature as the ever-cooling background. At that time, space travel will no longer provide refuge. Even Hell will have frozen over. We may then declare that the universe has died—not with a bang, but with a whimper.