What Will Happen to the Universe?

Nicole Ruber

NSET 110

Unit I, Essay 4

February 23, 2006

For some time now, scientists have been discussing the fate of the universe. Originally, it seemed that there were only two options: Either the world will last forever, or the universe will end at some time. However, according to new scientific research, this might not be the case.

Until recently, the widely accepted view was that the world would remain forever unchanged. Now, however, scientists are considering different possibilities. There are many scientific theories on this subject, though there is no definite way to prove any of them at this point in time.

One idea is that the world will have no complete end. The Steady State Theory is a model that was developed in 1984 by Fred Hoyle, Thomas Gold, Herman Bondi, and many others. This theory states that the universe will expand to a certain point of the Big Bang. This process would be repeated throughout history.

The second idea is that the world had a beginning, but no end. This theory states that the universe will run down to a state in which there is no energy to sustain life. In other words, the universe will reach a maximum entropy. The Big Rip is another idea in this theory. The Big Rip hypothesis relies on the type of dark energy in the universe. At a certain ratio between the dark energy pressure and its energy density, the world will be pulled apart.

The third idea is that a disastrous event will destroy the universe, but that there is a possibility that life may redevelop. One theory that goes along with this is that a Big Crunch came before the Big Bang, and this event will eventually happen again. In the Big Crunch, the universe stops expanding and instead collapses on itself.

Right now, some cosmologists are researching how recent data on dark energy could possibly contribute to the end of the universe, as either a Big Crunch or Big Rip. Yun Wang and Max Tegmark are two scientists actively involved in this subject. By their estimations, one of these events is set to happen in more than fifty gigayears.

New discoveries are needed in order to determine how the universe will end. For example, scientists need to discover how the world began to determine how it would end. Scientists would also need to