Although much of what we think we know about the far distant future of
the Universe is speculation, it is generally agreed that, absent any
groundbreaking new discoveries, everything you see will eventually
cease to exist as the Universe suffers ultimate heat death.
It won't happen for a long, long time. In fact, it's an unimaginably
long time. A ten followed by forty zeros years from now.
At this time, at the end of a period sometimes known as the Universe's
Degenerative Age, cosmologists speculate that all the protons in the
Universe will have decayed. Matter as we know it will simply have
evaporated into nothingness. The Universe will enter a new, matterless
age populated only by black holes (which, themselves, will eventually
disintegrate).
It is a cold, bleak, pessimistic forecast. A Universe 10^150 years old
will essentially be dark, devoid of all matter. No chemistry. No energy
except random photons, which won't illuminate anything. A bland, drab,
inconceivably black soup of nothingness.
You will be gone. All the molecules in your body will be gone. All the
atoms. All the protons and electrons and quarks and other subatomic
whatnots will be gone. Everything you were will be unremembered with no
hope of reconstitution.
So I guess I take some consolation in knowing that, when the Universe
dies, our good friend Duke will be sitting on a heavenly cloud
somewhere, at the right hand of Jeebus, with Mary and all the popes and
nearly 144,000 other folk, watching the whole thing go down. Because
infinity will just be beginning for them, won't it?
-Frank
--
fwarner1-at-franksknives-dot-com
Here's some of my work:
http://www.franksknives.com/
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