There are countless of theories about how the world will end. There actually at least three every year, but until now none of them have come to past, and with every prediction, human-kind becomes less interested in this subject. Nevertheless, science has some fascinating answers for the question: “How will the Universe end?”. It has nothing to do with a thousand-year old calender, or alien invaders. Let’s take a look at the most plausible ones:
1. The Heat Death of the Universe: The 2 Theories
The firs theory on how the universe will end is the one about the Head Death. As you may know, the Universe is continuously expanding, and in this situation two things may happen. The first of them is called the Big Crunch, and the second, is the Heat Death of the universe. In the second case, gravity will not be strong enough to overcome the expansion, so the Universe will continue to expand until galaxies drift apart and create huge gaps between one another. This theory is actually sad. Like all things that abide by the thermodynamic system, the Universe will also turn into a cold, dark, boring mist. As the galaxies move further away from each other, they will lose heat and energy. Stars will die and there will be no energy left to produce new ones. In the end, everything will go black, and only particles and matter will be left floating around and bouncing off of one another.
Heat Death Via Black Holes:
There is also a variation of the Universe Heat Death which is connected to black holes. It is believed that most matter in the Universe is orbiting black holes. In theory, everything that enters the orbiting range of a black-hole will be sucked inside and cannibalized. If the Universe were finite black holes would devour everything, and all that would be left would be gravity wells in an abyss and black holes that consume each-other and become larger. But not even black holes live forever. Once they lose their energy, they evaporate and emit “Hawking radiation”, so the universe would become a huge distribution of hawking radiation particles.
2. The Big Rip
Most theories about the end of the world start with the world BIG (see the Big Bounce, the Big Crunch, and even the Big Bang). Anyway, the Big Rip is one of the scariest prospects, because unlike other theories that occur after all the stars have died out in the Universe, this will happen in 16million years, when life will supposedly still exist on different planets. At this point in time, a force called “dark energy will cause an accelerated expansion of the universe (which is in an unstable state), and the universe will simply rip itself apart into nothingness. This universe-wide cataclysm, will destroy, burn, and tear apart everything that we know and transform them into particles of atomic dust.
3. The End of Time
This is undoubtedly my favorite theories of all, but I can’t quite wrap my head around. If there is one thing in this world that we would never imagine ending, it would be time. According to scientists, time might also end, but if it loses momentum, or freezes, how will we be able to discern one moment from the other? When calculating the end of the world, scientists were always phased by calculations involved, so they theorized that time itself might eventually stop. No explosions, crunches or rips, everything will simply come to a halt. That’s basically how the Universe will end.
“Then everything will be frozen, like a snapshot of one instant, forever.” But it wouldn’t really be forever, since time wouldn’t be moving forward at all. It would just be that one instant in time. You’d never die. You’d never grow old. It would be a kind of pseudo immortality. But you’d never know. (Source: Listverse)