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Loading... Last Three Minutes (Science Masters) (original 1994; edition 1994)by Paul Davies (Author)
Work InformationThe Last Three Minutes: Conjectures About the Ultimate Fate of the Universe by Paul Davies (1994)
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The Last Three Minutes, by world-renowned physicist and author Paul Davies, is a wonderful, fun book - morbid to the core! - that combines the latest and most scientifically sound thinking about the ultimate fate of the universe with vivid scenarios of how it will feel to those of us still around when the end comes. Look, if you will, past that last day of sunlight into perpetual night. Experience the onset of stardoom - when the nuclear energy of burning stars is finally exhausted. Journey through those eons of time when black holes are the last major source of energy, devouring the scattered remnants of burnt-out galaxies. And then, perhaps, the big crunch - the last three minutes, when the temperature of the cosmos becomes so great that even atomic nuclei must disintegrate, when larger and larger regions of space are compressed into smaller and smaller volumes, when, as Davies writes, "the handiwork of the big bang, and of generations of stars in creating heavy chemical elements, is undone in less time than it takes you to read this sentence." Will this be the stage on which cosmic life plays out its final act? Or is the universe destined to end very differently and in the much less distant future, overwhelmed by a sudden and unexpected cosmic catastrophe? Indeed, will the universe end at all? If it endures forever, will humanity or our descendants, robots or flesh, find a way to survive through eternal night? No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)523.19Natural sciences and mathematics Astronomy Astronomical objects and astrophysics Universe End of the UniverseLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.68)
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Wikipedia in English
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Of course, we could also be destroyed by a giant asteroid or some other space object. This too would take a while, but we are protected in the sense that space is massive, and the Earth is relatively small in it. So then there are other ways for our Galaxy to Bite the Bullet, so to speak. It could collide into another Galaxy, There could be a Giant Black Hole that sucks us into itself, but none of these events are very likely.
The ultimate end of the Universe depends on two things. The first is the amount of mass in the Universe, and the second is the rate of expansion of the Universe. Now, these are generally called the Big Crunch or the Big Freeze. This is generally what I call them. Either the Universe collapses back on itself, or it expands so much that new stars cannot be born. All of the stars will eventually become either Black Holes or Black Dwarfs, massive chunks of matter that are mere husks of what they were.
None of this is really important, though, since I will be long dead by the time all of this happens, unless they find some way for me to become a Star Child a la 2001: A Space Odyssey. (