Jiansen Lu
When will our universe end?
April 23rd 2011 04:24
The big bang model tells us that the universe was born 13.7 billion years ago. The current universe will continue to exist for billions of years more. Some other models say our universe is part of the multiverse and the universe will end in just five billion years.
But wait a second, the normal matter we know only accounts for about 4% of the universe. Dark matter accounts for 23% of the universe and there is a 73% dark energy, which we do not know. How can we predict the birth and death of our universe based on our limit knowledge of 4% of the universe? The way of human being thinking is based on linear extrapolation. The people living 2000 years ago can not imagine computer and Internet no matter how they extrapolated their knowledge in their time.
Universe in the path to die
I believe that extrapolation of our current understanding of our universe to million years ago or later may be fine, but billion years time scale is too large for us.
We can do some thinking in philosophical and fundamental aspect. If we believe in energy conservation, the universe will never end. But if we define the universe as normal matter universe, i.e 4% of the universe, the universe will die due to that normal matter is all transferred to dark matter or dark energy. There will be no carbon, not water, no proton, neutron, even no quark and electron.
Video: Cosmic Journeys: When Will Time End?
It now seems that our entire universe is living on borrowed time. How long it can survive depends on whether Stephen Hawking's theory checks out.
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