That’s it. The end. For real and forever. Now that you know, how does it make you feel, exactly? As published in the journal Science, and summarized below by the BBC:
Astronomers used the way that light from distant stars was distorted by a huge galactic cluster known as Abell 1689 to work out the amount of dark energy in the cosmos.
Dark energy is a mysterious force that speeds up the expansion of the universe.
Understanding the distribution of this force revealed that the likely fate of the universe was to keep on expanding.
[…]Eventually it will become a cold, dead wasteland with a temperature approaching what scientists term “absolute zero”.
Professor Priyamvada Natarajan of Yale University, a leading cosmologist and co-author of this study, said that the findings finally proved “exactly what the fate of the universe will be”.
Hmmm. And how does Professor Natarajan feel about that, I wonder? She seems happy enough to be the messenger, and I suppose it is quite the feather in her cap.
You would think that this news about the ultimate fate of the universe and everything that it has ever contained — including all of our lives, legacies and dreams — would be getting more attention, and indeed perhaps it will once it filters out through the rest of what’s going on in the headlines today, like the baseball player Roger Clemens being indicted for perjury and the salmonella-induced recall of 340 million eggs in the United States. Continue reading “Universe to End as “Cold, Dead Wasteland””