Velvet Oblivion
Part 4
Introduction to article: Mark Shwartz wrote an article called "Runaway Universe" published in September of 2002 addressing the collapse of the universe for Stanford Universities News Service. He includes information given by two Stanford professors of physics, Linde and Renata Kallosh.
"Instead of expanding exponentially, our cosmos may be in danger of collapsing in a mere 10 to 20 billion years."
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| Theories Around the Future of the Universe |
Mark Shwartz first analysis previous predictions about the future state of the universe, mentioning that "our own Milky Way will become an isolated island adrift in a sea of totally black space 150 billion years from now." He then brings attention to more recent studies and how the future of our universe might not look so lonely after all. According to a number of Stanford University's cosmologists "instead of expanding exponentially, our cosmos may be in danger of collapsing in a "mere" 10 to 20 billion years." This is commonly known as the "big crunch" which continues to be a current theory of exploration and interest to scientists all over the world. (See photo below) The big crunch illustrates for us the end to our universe. It begins with the big bang and the so called "beginning of time" and then as galaxies grow further and further apart from one another they might not have the correct amount of mass (the majority being dark matter) to escape the gravitational pull of one another, and also due to dark energy. Eventually after billions of years like Linde and Renata Kallosh's model predicted, the entire universe might begin to contract and finally will collapse just as it had begun, into a single point of matter smaller than a proton.
Shwartz then goes on to describe dark energies role in the collapse of the universe. As the universe gradually contracts, dark energy slowly becomes negative. He ties up the article with the new concept of cosmic bubbles. He includes a quote from Linde explaining that "The universe actually looks, not like a bubble, but like a bubble producing new bubbles… If our bubble collapses into a point, a new bubble is likely to inflate somewhere else -- possibly giving rise to an entirely new form of life…Our part of the universe may die, but the universe as a whole, in a sense, is immortal." This is a revolutionary theory in the realm of predictions that address the shape of the universe and the reasons behind it. But what I gathered to be most important about this answer was that the universe doesn't have an ending point, yet our existence certainly does if we don't perfect time travel within the next thousand years.
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| The Big Crunch Theory Explained |
From this article bloomed many questions, which would probably require a much longer essay for me to answer. First off, I wanted to know as much as possible about dark energy because it still remains to be a concept that is incredibly hard to grasp. Its role in the existence and collapse of the entire universe seems to be quite significant and is mentioned to be a stronger force that gravity; this I will probably research more extensively on my own time. Now that the possibility of a "big crunch" was introduced, it opened many doors of possibilities that would answer my final question.
Now in the final evaluation of my last source, I'll come to understand the outcomes of three different theories about our universe's potential future. Is the universe expanding? What is it's final destination? To answer the following questions, I returned to one of my most personal favorite authors who sparked my initial interest in space, Stephen Hawking.
"Our part of the universe may die, but the universe as a whole, in a sense, is immortal."
Reference: Shwartz, Mark. ""Runaway universe" may collapse in 10 billion years, new studies predict." Stanford News Service. (2002): n. page. Web. 16 Feb. 2014. <news.stanford.edu/pr/02/universe925.html>.
