The Big Crunch: The End of the Universe

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If dark energy is something other than a cosmological constant, there's nothing to say that it doesn't turn around and go from doing expansion to sort of contracting. And if that's the case, then we can end with a big crunch. So that would be where the expansion would some point stop, turn around and everything would come together again. The chance of stars individually hitting each other is tiny. Even when we're going to collide with Andromeda in four billion years, the chance that any single stars like hit each other in that collision is vanishing.

Cosmologists are always talking excitedly about the Big Bang and all the cool stuff that happened in the 14 billion years between then and now. But what about the future? We don't know for sure, but we know enough about the laws of physics to sketch out several plausible scenarios for what the future of our universe will hold. Katie Mack is a cosmologist who is writing a book about the end of the universe. We talk about the possibilities of a Big Crunch (and potential Big Bounce), a gentle cooling off where the universe gradually grows silent, and of course the prospect of a dramatic phase transition, otherwise known as the "bubble of quantum death." Which would make a great name for a band, I think we can all agree.

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Katherine (Katie) Mack received her Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. She is currently an Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University, where her research centers on theoretical cosmology, including dark matter and black holes. She is also a member of NCSU’s Leadership in Public Science Cluster. Her upcoming book, The End of Everything, will be published in 2020.

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