Page 93 - Sphurana 2020-21 (4)

The end of “Everything”

“Everything in the universe has as end”. One or the other way the universe itself is

not an exception for that. We all know how the universe arose from singularity,
after big-Bang, about 13.7 billion years ago. But how will it end?

There are thousands of theories and speculations about the end of the universe –
some scarier than others! But all of them have one postulate in common, the

universe never enters into Eternity, or infinite time! Here are some of the most
probable ways of end of “Everything”.

1. The Big Freeze
We have observed that an expanding cloud of smoke eventually dissipates into
nothing. This is what exactly happens in case of “the big Freeze”, also called the

Heat Death.
If there’s enough dark energy in the universe, to overcome gravitational forces, it

causes everything to move farther and farther away from each other. As this
expansion continues, galaxies move apart, new stars will not be born. Eventually

the atoms too decay and subatomic particles start moving apart and finally there

will no interaction between any particles in the universe.
The universe turns Dark, Cold and Motionless, causing the “big freeze”, ending
everything. Here the freeze is also referred to as “heat” death, solely because the

entropy of the universe will be infinite, due to infinite randomness.

2. The Big Crunch

If the dark energy couldn’t counterpart the gravitational forces, the exact opposite of
heat death occurs. In this case, the universe eventually starts Contracting. Galaxies

come closer and together, gradually all the particles collide each other, and collapse
under the force of gravity.

The universe ends into the same thing it began from, a singularity, an infinitely
dense speck. Although the possibility of happening of the “big Crunch” is relatively

low.

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